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A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


fi i 


By GRAPHO 




Chicago: 

THE GOODSPEED PRESS 
1917 



Copyright 

By 

J. A. Adams 
1917 



SEP 22 1917 


©GI.A473622 

"Tl-?) f ^ 


CONTENTS 


I. The Girl He Outgrew 9 

II . Before and After 17 

III. Sex in Preaching 25 

IV. New Arrivals 35 

V. A Day of Danger 43 

VI. A Romance With a Missing Link. . 49 

VII. To Be or Not to Be a Bachelor 55 

VIII. A Hint to Fire Up 61 

IX. The Beauty Spot of America 67 

X. • Money-Making Magic 77 

XL Rushing a Romance 85 

XH. A Day With the Mossbacks 93 

XIII. A Banker's Daughter in the Pulpit 99 

XIV. A Pullman Porter's Philosophy 115 

XV. The Man on the Road 123 

XVI. At Home Again 131 

XVH. A Minister and Trouble 139 

XVIH. A Little List of Callers 147 

7 


8 


CONTENTS 


XIX. When the Mail Man Came 157 

XX. She Read Huxley and Was Moved 

TO Remark 167 

XXL The Problem of the Affections... 175 

XXII. How TO Reach the Preacher 187 

XXIII. A Heart to Heart Talk 195 

XXIV. A Minister’s Wife 205 

XXV. A Theological Rough and Tumble. . 213 

XXVI. Brother and Bother 225 

XXVII. When Rumor Got on the Wing 237 

XXVIII. Preparing for the Stranger on 

Earth 243 

XXIX. When the Shadow Fell 251 

XXX. Are We Immortal? 259 

XXXI. A Skeptic’s Four-Fold Challenge. . 269 

XXXII. The Evolution of an Evolutionist 281 

XXXIII. A New Year and Another Church 293 

XXXIV. The Resignation and Return to 

Florida 303 

XXXV. Under the Linger-Longer Tree 313 


CHAPTER I. 


The Girl He Outgrew. 

I WAS in Florida, on a bank of the beautiful Indian 
river fishing. I had reached the winter resort on 
Saturday evening, preached for the leading church 
of the place on Sunday, and now I was out bright and 
early on Monday morning to try my luck with hook 
and line. Bob Bamby, the man who took my baggage 
to the hotel, had come along with me to point out the 
place where the fish were sure to bite and that right 
early. “You will get a fish there in two minutes,'' 
said Bob. 

I threw in my line, full of expectation, but did not 
get a bite nor a nibble. Time passed, and so did the 
fish. 

“The wind is in the wrong direction," Bob said. 

“It always is," I replied. 

“The fish bit well yesterday," he urged. 

“Yes," I said, “that is when fish bite, yesterday or 
last week. I wish I could fish yesterday or last 
week." 

Bob said that he must be going to meet a train, and 
he left. I staid on the job and kept staying, until I 
felt a nibble. Oh, the joy of a first nibble after a long 
wait ! It thrills you so, starts such a train of expecta- 
tion. But the nibble did not repeat itself — all was 
quiet on the Indian river. The wind was not right, 

9 


10 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


there was nothing doing in my line. The monotony 
was becoming thick and heavy, and I was losing faith 
in the whole situation and was about to give it up. 
But just then I heard some one approaching. I looked 
and saw a broad hat, a ribbon fluttering in the wind, 
a white waist, a handsome girl. There was spring in 
her movements, and the boy who followed her with a 
basket and fish pole looked as if he were going some- 
where. 

When the young lady saw me, a smile of recog- 
nition started to part her lips but was arrested in its 
course; and a little shadow passed over her fine face. 
I recognized her as a member of the congregation on 
Sunday morning. She was in the pew of a northern 
banker who had a winter home in the resort, so I was 
told, and I took it for granted that she was his daugh- 
ter. I also remembered that I had seen a shadow of 
disappointment during the sermon when I expressed 
some advanced views. It was evident that she did not 
like them. 

On approaching she said, ‘T beg your pardon, sir, 
but I trust that it will not disturb you if I fish here.” 

I told her that nothing could disturb me, that my 
luck was past feeling and the monotony had become 
too dense to be desirable, that I should like to have 
something happen. With an amused look she turned 
to the boy and told him to bait her hook, which he did 
with cheerful obedience, and which I would have done 
with even more alacrity. In about two minutes she 
had a fish. I felt annoyed, not at her luck, but at my 
own. The boy took off the fish, baited her hook, and 
she caught another fish, and another, half a dozen. 
The boy looked at her adoringly and at me con- 
temptuously, and I did not blame him for either look. 
I felt cast down, outdone, outclassed, forsaken of for- 
tune, cumbering the river bank for nothing. It is an 


THE GIRL HE OUTGREW 


11 


awful feeling to have, catching nothing and somebody 
along side of you catching fish every minute, especially 
if that somebody is a smart girl. 

She smilingly said to the boy, ‘^Andrew, you cer- 
tainly do know how to bait a hook, perhaps if you put 
the bait on the gentleman^s hook he would have better 
luck. I felt humiliated by the suggestion, but sub- 
mitted. Presently I felt a bite, gave a pull and 
brought out a toad fish. The boy snorted and the girl 
struggled with herself to keep down her laughter. A 
toad fish is the most bloated humbug that you see in 
Florida out side of a promoters office. 

The next time I had better luck and brought up a 
real fish, but it was too small even for imagination to 
work upon and make into a big fish story, and the 
story is more important than the fish. I wanted 
something which my after recollection could develop 
into a goodsized story without stretching itself too 
much. The young woman kept on with her luck un- 
til her basket was well filled, and she prepared to 
leave. I felt relieved, and also as if I was about to 
lose something. After taking a step or two she turned 
around and said, “I do not wish to seem obtrusive, but 
I am reluctant to leave without saying that I know 
you. We have met before.” 

I assured her that it must have given me much 
pleasure, but I could not remember when or where 
it was. “Perhaps it will come to me,” I added, “when 
I have more time to think about it.” 

“I will give you time,” she replied, and started 
home. The boy followed her with triumphant step 
and a withering backward glance over his shoulder 
at me. He surely thought that he was the “Queen's 
Own.” 

I may have caught some fish after the departure 
of the successful young lady, but I do not remember. 


12 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


for I was trying to think where I had met her. I 
could not recall any girl of a previous acquaintance 
who looked so smart, and the only clew which I 
could find in my memory was through her voice. 
There was a suggestion of music in it which I seemed 
to have heard before, but could not chase it down. 
I went back through all kinds of music which I had 
heard in the past, from the warbling of a bird to the 
wild scream of a soprano trying to strike a high note, 
but I did not come up with the girl. I gave it up, and 
the fishing also. 

The next morning I received a letter from my 
mother, and of course she urged me to take care of 
my health. ‘‘Keep out of doors,” she said, “get fresh 
air and take bn tan. Fishing is good for both. Go 
fishing. If you come back with a good coat of tan 
people will think you much improved in health. Put 
it on thick.” 

I agreed with mother and went fishing again. 
The young woman did not come, which did not mat- 
ter, for I was getting fresh air and tan and a few 
fish. However, I frequently looked along the path by 
which she had come the day before. She did not 
come the next morning nor the next. Then I 
stopped fishing and walked over into the park for 
fresh air and tan. To my surprise I found the young 
lady sitting on a bench under a live oak. There was 
an inquiring expression on her face as I approached, 
but I was obliged to confess that my memory had 
failed me, that I could not recall a former meeting, 
greatly to my disappoinment. 

“Perhaps I can assist you,” she said; “Your father 
was pastor in our place when I was ten or eleven 
years old; and that is where we met. You were in 
the high school and I was in the grammar school. 
But you passed along our street on the way to school ; 


THE GIRL HE OUTGREW 


13 


and now and then, when we had a hard problem in 
arithmetic, you helped us” 

‘‘Yes, I remember that, and now I remember you — 
little Ethel Kingsley. How strange that I had for- 
gotten your name and you! But you were not a 
banker’s daughter then.” 

“No, we were very poor, too poor to be remem- 
bered,” she added with a smile. 

“Not exactly,” I said, “for one thing which I do 
remember is that you cried one day when the girls 
made fun of your clothes, and I had to call them 
down for it.” 

“And I did not forget that. Our poverty was one 
of my trials, and it made life less interesting for the 
whole family. But father had pluck and mamma had 
faith. He worked, and she prayed, and I trotted 
along with the family procession. The fact was that 
papa had a mining proposition out West, a regular 
hole in the ground which took all his money; but 
bye and bye they struck ore, and then the money 
came fast, plenty of it. Then he went East and be- 
came a banker. Now he is a man of means, not 
dreadfully or disastrously rich, but rich enough to 
require considerable piety to keep his poise.” 

“It was stupid in me not to remember a family 
who stood by father as faithfully as yours did. Now 
that I recall it all, I remember that my father used 
to think you a good listener for a little girl.” 

“Yes, I could understand some things which he 
said,” she replied with a little play on the words. 

“Better than you did me last Sunday. I got the 
impression that you did not quite like my sermon.” 

“It was brilliant.” 

“That is nothing; sermons are supposed to feed 
people, not dazzle them.” 


14 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


She looked up at a mocking bird which was sing- 
ing gloriously on a limb above, and then remarked 
that some congregations must be doubly hungry for 
their Sunday dinners. 

'‘I am sorry to have disappointed you with the first 
sermon that you heard me preach after these years.*’ 

‘‘Disappointed is a big word,” she said, “and I 
want to go slow in talking about preaching. It is 
difficult work. I presume that I had expected you to 
preach as your father did.” 

“But if we preached as our fathers did, where 
would progress be? For is not that what progress 
means, that one generation improves upon another? 
If sons did not outgrow their fathers the world would 
not grow at all.” 

“That is true, and I think that is what ails me; 
you have outgrown me. I always thought you would 
arrive.” 

“I wish I had.” 

“What? Pastor of a large church in a big city, 
and still in your twenties ; if that is not arriving, what 
is?” 

“That is the outside of it. The inside of it is what 
troubles me.” 

“Our renewed acquaintance is too brief to discuss 
that part of it,” she said with a smile, and then added, 
as she rose to go, “you will come to see us soon, won’t 
you?” 

I would have called in half an hour, if I had con- 
sulted my impulses. She was interesting. I had 
never before met a girl just like her. It was reported 
around the resort that her father was a man of much 
wealth and that she had been given all the advantages 
of college and travel that money could provide. And 
yet her religion was old-fashioned, and one of her 
friends remarked that she seemed more concerned 


THE GIRL HE OUTGREW 


IS 


to have the world keep its road to Heaven straight 
than the automobile people were to have a highway 
cemented and sand-papered. I thought I should like 
to give her old theology a downhill push when the 
time came, but did not feel sure of what might hap- 
pen to me if I set her mental machinery in motion. 
There was a subtle something about her which made 
me think that, when it came to intellectual doings, 
she could give plenty of trouble to an antagonist and 
go away laughing after the fray was over. Anyhow 
it was hard to believe that this Miss Kingsley was 
once the plain little girl whom I saw listening to my 
father’s sermons with round-eyed wonder. 




CHAPTER IL 
Before and After. 

A fter Miss Kingsley had gone I walked over 
to what was called the Linger-Longer Tree. 
In front was a beautiful view of the great river, 
but the long streamers of moss and the broad leaves 
of the palmettos near by gave it a somewhat secluded 
appearance. While sitting on the rustic bench look- 
ing at the fish which leaped out of the water, gleamed 
in the sunshine and then shot down into the depths 
again. Bob Bamby, the expressman, came along. 

‘"Why do they call this the Linger-Longer Tree?” 
I asked. 

*Tf you had seen them young people lingerin’ here 
as often as I have you would not ask that question,” 
he replied with a chuckle. 

“The view is fine,” I said. 

“Yes,” replied Bob, “the young people look at the 
river a little bit and then at one another a long 
time. The view is fine. Parson, very fine. Going 
fishing tomorrow?” 

“I don’t know. Are the fish biting well?” 

“For some people,” he replied with another 
chuckle. 

“Sorry that you could not keep up with the young 
lady the other day. She is popular, the popularest 
girl in this resort.” 

“What makes her so popular? What does she 
do?” 


17 


18 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


*‘0h, she don’t do much of anything, just looks 
pretty and is not stuck up. I don’t mind high-up 
folks, if they are not stuck up. Some of these people 
who come down here never talk to other people, only 
to one another, and I tell you. Parson, there are a 
good many other people in the world. The whole 
Kingsley family seems to know that, and it makes me 
like them. When I took the young lady’s trunk over 
the first time she came, I saw that she had her brown 
eyes on me, watching for the woodwork, and I handled 
that trunk as if it was a baby. She said, ‘Thank you, 
Mr. Bamby, you did that nicely.’ That fetched me. 
I was ‘Mr. Bamby.’ I walked out of the house on 
air. One of them young dudes with the little black 
coat and yellow pants and cane would have been proud 
to have the banker’s daughter notice him, and here 
she was speakin’ to me as if I owned land or was 
putting up at a Flagler hotel. Such things count. 
Parson.” 

“Then she does something which makes her popu- 
lar; she calls you Mr. Bamby. Have you been here 
long?” 

“Yes, sir. Before and After.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“What do I mean by Before and After?” Come 
down here where we can see further and I will show 
you what I mean. Do you see them empty houses 
over there? The woods in this region is full of them. 
There used to be people in them ; now there is noth- 
ing in them but bats, ghosts and heart-breaks. A 
lot of people come here from the North with their 
heads plumb full of ideas and money in their pockets 
which was achin’ to get away from them. They al- 
lowed that the folks down here didn’t know nothin’, 
or at least, not enough to fill a page in a child’s 
primer, and they had wagon loads of book learning 


BEFORE AND AFTER 


19 


and other furnishings for setting up in business. 
They said we didn't know enough about our soil to 
raise a disturbance on it, but they would show us 
something and collect when the show was over. I 
wish I had half the money them people was each and 
severally going to make. I would go down to the 
Royal Poinciana and strut around like the rest of them 
plutocrats, and Lucy would take the eleven o'clock 
bath every morning and sit in the loggia and look 
swell like the rest of them. And they did make 
money ; made it fly, I mean, setting out orange groves 
and more orange groves. And I admit they were not 
altogether to blame, for an orange grove can be 
mighty deceivin'. When you ride across the country 
and see the orange trees in bloom, it looks like a 
weddin' procession all the way, and the man thinks 
that gettin’ an orange grove is like marryin' an heir- 
ess. And when he sees an orange peepin’ through 
the green leaves so yellow and golden he thinks it 
good as gold, worth a hundred cents on the dollar 
every time. But an orange can have more sweet 
juice in it and more gall than anything that ever 
growed. It can divorce the fellow that gets the bridal 
procession idea in his head from a big wad of good 
money. 

‘Well, one day when the oranges were all ripe, 
and everybody saw a fortune coming up the front path 
without stopping to shut the gate, a north wind 
started this way, cornin' down after its friends and 
former acquaintances to remind them of old times, I 
s'pose. It had a shiver in it, I tell you, but the people 
thought if they set up with it that night It would 
keep on blowin' as they used to do about the money 
they were goln' to make. For you know when the 
wind blows Jack Frost don’t venture out. But when 
the sun set that evenin', the wind got tired and just 


20 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


laid down on the job. Then Jack Frost come out 
with both feet shod with desolation, as you said in 
your sermon yesterday, and what he didn't do to 
them orange groves isn't worth mentioning. He 
hardly left enough of some of them to stub your toe 
on. The country went so dead that even the buz- 
zards didn't want to fly over it. Then the people be- 
gan to get homesick for their mother-in-laws and 
other folks up North, and they faded out of sight, 

went back where they could get more on the dollar 

for their surplus knowledge. 

“That black night was the dividin' line. Since 

then we call it Before and After. But that was not 

all. Them people were goin' to raise a lot of other 
things, towns, for instance, and cities with all the mod- 
ern improvements. Well, that is a good idea if you 
keep your seat in the saddle and hold on to the reins. 
But they didn’t do either. They let the thing run 
away with them; and our sleepy old fellows who 
didn't know nothin' that a northern man would stop 
to put on a writing pad, and who had a lot of brush 
land which they would have traded for a blind hor^e, 
suddenly woke up and helped to make the new ideas 
shoot. My, how they sold that brush land for city 
lots, at Chicago prices. Men who couldn't get credit 
at the corner gocery for a box of soda crackers or a 
plug of tobacco suddenly began to swell around like 
millionaires, and people called them ‘Colonel' or 
‘Judge.' Fortunately some of them knew enough to 
hold on to their money, and the other fellows held 
on to their lots; they couldn’t let go. 

“Awhile back Jack Dawes and me went over there 
about forty miles on a little hunting expedition; and 
when we were in a thick tangle of woods one after- 
noon, the dogs begun to whine and yelp as if they 
were gettin' heartsick. You know when a huntin' 


BEFORE AND AFTER 


21 


dog sees a diamond rattler he don’t proceed to em- 
brace it, but begins to cry like a baby that wants its 
mother. So we thought of course, that the dogs had 
scented a big rattler; and we went through the brush 
careful like with our guns cocked, but we couldn’t see 
no snake. Howsomever, we found one of those 
famous towns which was going to be, all laid out in 
streets and blocks — laid out for buryin’. Everybody 
who bought a lot there got bit, and you can believe 
me or not. Parson, but that is what ailed them dogs ; 
they* was plumb scared, afeard that they would get 
bit. 

just sit down and thought about it; how a pos- 
sum come out of a hole where the bank was to be, 
and a coon come down a tree where the city hall was 
to be; and a rabbit crept out of a nest where the 
Metropolitan hotel was to be, and all the other var- 
mints from the boulevards come together, and some 
wise old owl called the meetin’ to order, and then they 
passed resolutions of respect for the dead. We took 
off our hats, me and Jack, and walked softly until we 
got out of the cemetery. 

*^Do you know. Parson, it isn’t good to know too 
much in a new country; it is apt to cause an attack 
of acute indigestion, isn’t that what you call it? 

know that a razor-back hog don’t look as if he 
was good for nothin’ but to cut through a thick fog 
on a heavy mornin’; but a native thinks if he has a 
poland china or a berkshire he will have to raise 
corn to raise the hog, and this is a hot country and 
there is plenty of the tired feelin’; and you don’t 
have to raise nothin’ to raise a razor-back hog. He 
raises hisself. They make a lot of fuss about our 
Florida cattle, but I am bound to say this for them — 
they keep the price of beef down, and that is a whole 
lot these days. Nobody is going to pay thirty cents 


22 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


a pound for beeksteak when it costs forty cents worth 
of labor to chew it. A man at the hotel the other 
day swore at the waiter because he gave him a Florida 
steak. He said he would defy even Colonel Roose^ 
velt to put his teeth through it. But these fellows who 
can’t chew a Florida steak chew the rag all day. It 
isn’t good citizenship. Preach on it, Parson, preach 
on it. And I want to tell you that when it comes to 
raisin’ things in this neck of the woods, it is like 
raisin’ bread, it takes the dough. 

‘'But the people from the North are beginmn’ to 
have more properer ideas about Florida. They begin 
to see that it was made for the fun of the thing. I 
never studied geography much; but when I look at 
the map it seems as if our state was what some of 
you fellows call an after thought, made up of left 
over material and hung on the rest of the country 
like a frill on a woman’s coat, a kind of ornament 
spangled over with flowers and dangling with bird 
songs. It isn’t best to work it too hard. It’s a mighty 
good playground. Parson, mighty good. Yes, sir, the 
people have the correct idea, who make their money 
up North where the wind keeps them cool while they 
work and then come down here and get in the eye 
of the sun where the birds sing because they can’t 
help it, and the flowers bloom because they can’t 
help it, and the waters laugh because they can’t help 
it. 

“And, Parson, I don’t want you to think that I am 
tryin’ to flatter you, but my Lucy said you preached 
like you couldn’t help it. We don’t like things down 
here to cost much work. That’s the reason we are 
all Democrats. If we had two big parties, we would 
have to work hard to carry an election ; but when we 
are all Democrats an election carries itself. Old 
Andy Jackson made it dead easy for a lot of us; he 


BEFORE AND AFTER 


23 


was a Democrat, and so are we. It would be a whole 
lot easier for you preachers, if everybody thought the 
same way. You wouldn’t have to saw your way 
through a lot of first places and second places. 

“And let me tell you another thing. Parson, it 
will be easier if you don’t get too much north wind in 
your sermons. I have seen preachers come down 
here with a lot of imported air in their sermons, and 
pretty soon they got a frost. People didn’t go to hear 
them. And don’t take us too serious. We got along 
before the frost and We got along after it. Things 
don’t stop because something happens. I have seen 
people wonder how the world could get along with- 
out a man, and a week after he was dead they be- 
gan to forget what he did. Before an election all the 
stump orators are a declarin’ that if we don’t win, 
the world will turn turtle and we’ll all be smashed, 
and the next day the groceryman asks you to pay 
your bill, just as if nothin’ had happened. 

“But say. Doctor, I wish you would tell us some 
Sunday when Before begins and when After ends; I 
feel a little scared about the hereafter.” 

“I thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Bamby> and 
for all this talk^ I feel quite indebted to you.” 

“Never mind about that now, you can pay me 
some other time. I hear the train cornin’ and must 
hurry over to the station. So long.” 

And with a twinkle in his eye he was off, and I 
was saying to myself, “he does not use classical 
language, but he is pretty close to the common de- 
nominator.” 


CHAPTER III. 

Sex in Preaching. 

44"^^ OU did not tell me much of the story between 
j[ the days when I knew you as a little girl and 
now/’ I said to Miss Kingsley when I called. 
*T should like to hear more of it. There is some dif- 
ference between short dresses and all the long think- 
ing which you seem to be doing about the universe. 
What was the evolution? What were you doing 
through the years?” 

^T went the usual round,” she replied, "‘through 
high school, through the fret and fever of clothes, and 
then through college, and then through Europe as far 
as Rome, Venice, and Constantinople, with a six 
months’ stay in Germany. While there I made a 
little study of the German school system. And it is 
great. They know how to develop brain power. 
Human efficiency is their idea. I also heard the noted 
theologians as I had opportunity and as far as I could 
stretch my knowledge of German.” 

“Did you hear the Socialist leaders?” I asked. 

“Some of them, and I tried to learn what they 
were doing. Making society altogether lovely is a 
great thing, you know.” 

“So it is, and I am interested in that subject; I 
should like to know what you found.” 

“I found a troublesome "if.’ Socialism runs along 
smoothly until it comes to an if, and then there is a 
jolt. The fact is. Socialism was the theme of my 

25 


26 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


graduating talk, and that was when I first became 
acquainted with its troubles and had some trouble of 
my own with it. I thought I knew a good deal befof^^ 
I began to read up on the subject, and expected to 
brush away all the mists that society is muddling 
around in and settle the problem of human welfare. 
But when I got down all the books on the subject 
which I could find in the library and read and read, I 
always found myself standing at an If. If society 
would do right, or the church do better, or employers 
give up their greed, or some other people quit their 
meanness, then we would have social salvation and a 
new heaven on earth. Really I was in despair, and 
if I could have had two days more I would have 
dropped the subject and taken another theme, but I 
had come to the last night before commencement, and 
the clock was striking twelve and my head was ach- 
ing. So I threw down the manuscript and slipped 
into bed to fight nightmares over the dreaded to- 
morrow. In the morning a happy idea struck me, 
and it let me out beautifully that day.” 

‘‘What was it?” I asked eagerly. 

'‘Why, when I came to that troublesome If I turned 
to the Stars and Stripes hanging at the side of the 
stage, and with passionate voice and outstretched 
arms I shouted its praises as the banner of hope for 
all. ‘Oh, glorious flag!’ I cried, ‘the eternal sky gave 
thee its blue, eternal energy its red, eternal purity 
its white, and the stars of heaven came down to 
nestle in thy folds.’ In my excitement my hair broke 
loose and fell down over my shoulders. But I just 
stood for a moment, with my eyes riveted on Old 
Glory, as if lost in wonder, love and praise. When I 
turned to take my seat the house shook with applause. 
Nobody had seen me sidestep the troublesome If. 
The flag dazzled them and saved the day for me.” 


SEX IN PREACHING 


27 


“I wish I had been there to see you and to clap 
my hands. You must have made a picture. No doubt 
the crowd thought they had seen the Goddess of Lib- 
erty praising her own. But preachers can’t look so 
angelic or be quite so artful.” 

‘‘They can’t!” she exclaimed. “Perhaps you do 
not see them as well from the pulpit as we do from 
the pews. There are preachers who can raise their 
eyes to heaven and look so angelic that if a poor little 
angel happened to be traveling through the church, 
he would want to run away and get some more heav- 
enly plumage. And they can be artful, very. Haven’t 
I heard them tearing the Four Gospels into shreds, 
and then near the close of their discourses burst into 
a glowing peroration in praise of the Master of the 
Gospels, just as if they had not tried to destroy every 
foundation of historical belief in Him?” 

“Don’t be too hard on the preachers.” 

“I won’t. I love them,” she laughed. 

“But what I don’t understand is, how you became 
so much interested in theology.” 

“Isn’t it interesting?” 

“To some men, but not usually to women, and you 
seem to take it much to heart.” 

“Why shouldn’t I, being a woman ? So far as there 
is a difference between the sexes in this respect, men 
think truth and women feel truth.” 

“Well, what is the difference in the long run?” 

“Only this; that thinking gives form to truth, and 
feeling gives force to truth, and force is what pro- 
duces effect, whether in mechanics or morals. , 
Theories are dry life, convictions are living power.” 

“That is pretty good, but you must admit that men 
are greater discoverers of truth than women.” 

“Yes, I admit that men are the explorers, the 
Jiunters. I am not trying to belittle them. I am a 


28 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


man booster, when I have time to spare from woman^s 
troubles. But men are sometimes more interested in 
the hunt or the chase after truth than in the truth 
itself. You know what the German philosopher said, 
‘If I held truth, like a bird in my hand, I would open 
my hand and tell it to fly away that I might pursue 
and capture it again.’ That kind of thing is the love 
of intellectual pleasure or excitement, not the love of 
truth.” 

“So it is, but without wishing to be personal, you 
seem to like to chase around with the theologians.” 

“Yes, I do, and my reason for it is somewhat per- 
sonal. I told you the other day that our poverty 
was distressing when father was carrying that unpro- 
ductive mine, but mother was distressed by the fear 
that if they struck ore in the mine and we became 
rich we would forget God. This distress increased 
as the prospect brightened. She talked very earnestly 
about it one evening, and papa said, ‘Poor or rich I 
never shall turn my back on the church, nor give up 
my religion.’ And he has not. Then mother went 
with me to my room and knelt down with me and 
prayed that I never would lose my faith, that her 
God would be my God. Her tears fell upon my face 
when she kissed me goodnight, and they baptised me 
into her faith forever. I do not care what they say 
or who comes or goes, I shall not give up the faith 
which made mother care more for my soul than for 
wealth. I know as I live that she would rather have 
lived in poverty to the end of her days than to have 
the love of money quench the love of God. This is 
very personal, but I tell it that you may understand 
me better. I am not simply speculating in theology 
because it is intellectually interesting; but I study 
it, think about it, talk about it in self-defense. I am 
determined to know how much there is in these at- 


SEX IN PREACHING 


29 


tacks which are made on my faith; and the more 
subtle they are, or the more scholarly they claim to 
be, the more determined I am to hunt them down to 
the weak point. For there always is a weak point 
somewhere. I do not deny that there is some intel- 
lectual pleasure in it, for it is an important contribu- 
tion of a college girrs education that it prepares her 
for mental enjoyment, but the all important thing is 
that it gives my soul satisfaction. It keeps my mind 
and heart together. I can give a reason for the faith 
that is in me.” 

“I deeply appreciate this personal explanation,” I 
said, ‘‘and I feel that your mother was a Hamilcar 
and you a Hannibal, but in a better cause. I don't 
wonder that you so bravely scaled the theological 
Alps. You ought to be a preacher, now that woman 
is at the front.” 

“I have seen Sundays when I wanted to preach 
about five minutes after a sermon, ended its dismal 
doubt. But I think preaching is a man's mission. 
Woman is climbing up, but I am not aching to see 
her climb the pulpit steps. There is a difference. A 
man is more concerned about what he will say when 
he appears in public; a woman is more concerned 
about how she will look. The last thing a man does 
before leaving his room is to run his talk over in his 
mind, but the last thing a woman does is to look 
into her mirror to see that her eyelashes are on 
straight. 

“Besides, there is sex in preaching, sex in oratory, 
sex in mind. Man is made for the platform and the 
pulpit. He is the spokesman of the race.” 

“How so, don't women like to talk?” 

“Yes, about a piece of news. But a man likes to 
talk about what he thinks. If he thinks a thought he 
wants to preach it out, or deliver a lecture or write 


30 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


an article. If he thinks two or three more thoughts, 
he is seized with an irrepressible desire to write a 
book. But he may carry a piece of news around in 
his mind a week, as he does a letter in his pocket 
which his wife had given him to mail. But it is not 
in a woman to keep a piece of news out of circula- 
tion. It would burn a hole in her mind, just as money 
does in her pocket. She keeps news and currency in 
circulation. If she hears something she goes over 
to a neighbor or friend and tells it Woman was born 
before newspapers, and it is certain that a real news- 
paper man is born of woman. Men call women gos- 
sips, and then stay at home from church to read the 
Sunday newspaper with its bundle of gossip big 
enough to make a bonfire. Funny, isn’t it? The 
daily newspaper’s immense popularity and influence 
are woman’s justification as a circulator of the com- 
munity’s news or will be when she has used a 
scrubbing brush on it. But if a woman has a thought 
she can lock it up and say nothing. ‘Mary pondered 
all these things in her heart.’ Woman makes heart 
treasures of her thoughts, not speeches, nor sermons, 
nor books. 

“So I say there is sex in preaching. For while 
the gospel is good news, it is a system of eternal 
truth, vast thoughts, great doctrines, just the things 
that man’s mind likes to handle and to hand out to 
the world. A preacher who only tells stories has 
missed the main line. If a minister spends more time 
circulating in the neighborhood than in his study, his 
people begin to complain; they want ideas, great 
thoughts. There is a tireless machine running inside 
of the human head, and it takes an able-bodied man 
to feed the grist into the hopper.” 

“But woman is arriving in politics and on the 
campaign stump, what do you think of her there?” 


SEX IN PREACHING 


31 


“I think the same about her there that I do about 
her preaching. Politics is not a thing of today or 
tomorrow, but of long stretches of time. Rome was 
not built in a day, and pur republic came out of the 
ages. Master minds gathered up the ideas of the 
past, the lessons of all the tragedies of the centuries, 
and thought them into a free government. But a 
woman does not think so much about these things; 
and if there is not a burning issue up, she loses inter- 
est in politics. At one election she turns out en masse; 
at the next election she stays at home and lets 
her party get turned out of power. You can’t have 
a burning issue all the time, but we must have gov- 
ernment all the time. Therefore I say that men are 
more likely to be the teachers and leaders of the future 
than women.” 

“Yes, but there is another side to this question,” I 
replied. “The trouble with men, whether in the pul- 
pit or on the platform, is what you mentioned a few 
minutes ago. They are apt to be more in love with 
their ideas and theories than with the people. They 
feel intellectual interest, not the human saving inter- 
est. I have to contend with it in myself all the time. 
Some critics complain that there are too many women 
teachers in our schools, but it is natural. A woman 
takes an interest in the child and wants knowledge to 
help it. The man teacher’s interest is in the know- 
ledge, and he teaches the children because he wants 
a place to put his knowledge. As soon as he thinks 
some other calling more interesting than putting 
knowledge into the minds of the young, he quits 
teaching.” 

“What you say reminds me of a pretty little poem 
I found in a newspaper the other day, and I liked it 
so well that I housed some of it in memory: 


Z2 A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 

‘If you put a little lovin’ into all the work you do 

And a little bit of gladness, and a little bit of you, 

Then your work will be attractive, and the world will 
stop to look. 

And the world will see a sweetness, like the tinklin’ 
of a brook. 

In the finished job; and then the world will turn to 
look at you 

With a world’s appreciation of the thing you’ve found 
to do.* 

''It is easy to give something out of the books, but 
what many a congregation is saying to its learned 
preacher is, 'Give us a little bit of you, something 
which is in your heart, which is coursing in your 
blood, something which your tears would tell if we 
knew your story !’ A woman once wrote to Mrs. 
Clark, of the famous Pacific Garden Mission in Chi- 
cago, that she had saved her by a kiss. When Mrs. 
Clark asked her for an explanation, the woman replied 
that she was in the county hospital for a time, suffer- 
ing from an injury. Mission workers called on her 
and talked to her, but made no impression. 'But 
when I saw you talking to a fallen girl of the street,’ 
she wrote, 'a wretched creature, then praying with 
her and then bending over and kissing her, it just 
melted my heart.* 

"When I read that sweet little story I wished that 
I could throw my arms around Mrs. Clark and kiss 
her. I know the angels will want to kiss her when 
she goes to heaven, and all the women she helped to 
redeem will kiss her. ‘A little bit of you* is the very 
Christ of it. He gave Himself.** 

"I repeat my opinion,** I said on rising to leave, 
"you would make a good preacher. Perhaps you will 
preach in that pulpit over there just to show the par- 
sons how. Women have been known to change their 
minds.** 


SEX IN PREACHING 


33 


“And men have been known to change their way 
of preaching/^ she added with a smile. 

I had much reason afterward to remember my 
prophecy and her remark. 


CHAPTER IV. 

New Arrivals. 

M y sermons the next Sunday did not please 
Miss Kingsley, as I inferred from little signs 
and revelations. At the door of the church 
she looked at me wistfully, as if she thought I was 
good material going to waste or a battery burning 
itself out to make darkness. But the house was 
crowded, morning and evening, and that goes a long 
way with a preacher. People, people ! What a 
hunger we have for people ! There is no tragedy like 
the tragedy of empty pews. It is so serious when 
everybody seems to be dead on Sunday morning, and 
all swarmingly alive on Monday morning. On the 
way to the postoffice the next day I met Miss Kings- 
ley with an open letter in her hand and a happy look 
on her face. 

“There is such a good piece of news in this letter,” 
she said, “that I must tell you about it. My cousin. 
Miss Susie Searcy, is coming to spend the rest of the 
season with us. She is a charming girl, and we think 
the world of her. I shall tell you more about her this 
afternoon.” 

I had been invited to take lunch at the Kingsleys* 
and an auto ride in the afternoon, and during the ride 
Miss Kingsley gave me a further introduction to her 
expected cousin. “Her mother has been dead for some 
years,” she said, “and we often have the dear girl 
with us. We went to Europe together and our sum- 

35 


36 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


mer houses are at the same resort. She made a bril- 
liant record in college, took the honors, and touched 
the high spots. I expect her to be quite an admirer of 
your sermons, for she is an advanced thinker.*^ 

‘‘I am surprised to hear that,” I said, ‘‘because I 
thought your whole connection solidly orthodox, clear 
out to the edges.” 

“Cousin was orthodox enough before going to col- 
lege, but when she came home she had flung it all on 
the scrap heap, as she said. She thought it strange 
that we should have expected anything else. ‘Why, 
don’t you know,’ she exclaimed, ‘that all the girls in 
that college shed their old beliefs. They would feel 
like a country cousin coming to the city in a back- 
woods dress, if they did not shed them. The profes- 
sors are modern, the college preachers are modern, 
the books added to the library are modern, and every 
nose around the institution is tipped at a modern 
angle. We are simply stuck on modern ideas. Baked 
beans are about the only old-fashioned thing allowed. 

“ ‘You think,’ she went on, ‘that you would hold 
out against it ; but the fine scorn with which a profes- 
sor withers an old belief, and the double-plated assur- 
ance of the progressive college preacher are too much 
for you. I have seen girls cry when the process first 
began, and letters from their mothers exhorted them 
to keep up their religious belief; but they get hard- 
ened to it and laugh it off. It is all a part of life, you 
know. If the old religion can’t stand up against the 
new knowledge, it is not our fault. We are sent to 
college to be taught; and if that is what they teach 
us, why of course that is what we learn. We are 
going to school now, not a hundred or a thousand 
years ago, and the world do move.’ 

“ ‘Mother shed some tears over it, but I told her 
that when there is a rush of new theology to a college 


NEW ARRIVALS 


37 


girl’s head it takes time to moderate it; and so we 
have concluded to enjoy the happy Susie and ignore 
the theology.” 

The cousin came at the expected time, and if I 
had been making comparisons I should have called her 
one of the most beautiful girls I ever had seen. She 
had a wonderful charm of manner. The joy of life 
seemed to be hers. It was easy to see why the family 
thought the world of her and why she took honors in 
college, for she seemed irresistible, even to a hard 
problem in mathematics. 

'T knew you would like her,” said her cousin, 
some days later. But I was not sure that I felt 
pleased that Miss Kingsley was willing to have me 
like her so well, that is, very much. It was a 
shadowy feeling which started more questions than I 
wanted to consider. 

But I felt a little bit relieved when a letter came 
from my old classmate and chum, Don Dinsmore, 
saying that he was going to join me at the Florida 
resort. blizzard is raging here,” he wrote, “and it 
makes the streets between the skyscrapers look like 
canyons when a snowstorm is driving through the 
mountains. Me for Florida.” I thought his coming 
would make a diversion or at least put a triangle on 
the square. And I must confess that I felt I might 
be of some assistance to fate in bringing so promis- 
ing a young man and so brilliant a girl where the 
paths meet. It seems strange to me now that I had 
the assurance to think that I could weave the web 
between two lives. We can watch the weaver at his 
loom and see the threads of white and blue and red 
go here and there and at last the figure come true to 
the pattern. But the human brain, darting its 
thoughts through light or darkness, changing the in- 
visible into the most visible, filling the empty with the 


38 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


real, and turning all things into myriad forms, while 
the heart throws all colors and all shapes into the 
web which the brain weaves, who can tell what the 
product will be? 

I soon discovered that mixing with matters of fate 
has some surprises, that unexpected factors may 
come around a corner and queer the situation. My 
first surprise came when Miss Searcy told me that 
they had already met my friend Dinsmore. “We 
met him on the steamer coming back from Europe,'' 
she said. “Did you mention our names when you wrote 
him," she asked. “Yes, I think so," I replied. She 
looked away into the distance and said nothing. 

My next surprise came in discovering an engage- 
ment ring on Miss Searcy's finger. Then I began to 
realize that the Fates did not need any assistance 
from me, that they were on the job before I started 
down their way. 

After Dinsmore's arrival there was still another 
surprise for me. He had not been at the resort a 
week until he began to be uneasy, restless, moody. 

“What is the matter, Dinsmore?" I asked. 

“I don't know," he replied, “unless it is the Florida 
climate." 

“Climate nothing! You act as if the wires were 
crossed or short-circuited or something that way. 
Out with it, old man, and let's understand one an- 
other. You are not getting your money's worth out 
of the sunshine or the scenery." 

“There is too much scenery for my comfort," he * 
replied. “The last thing Daddy did when I was leav- 
ing home was to tell me not to get tangled up down 
here. ‘Two of the young men in our house went down 
there last year,' he said, ‘and came back engaged. 

I don't want you to be engaged. You are not far 
enough along in business. Living is too high, and 


NEW ARRIVALS 


39 


the young women of your set are too high up in the 
air to keep the supports under them without a lot 
of prosperity. “Everybody works but father What 
a joke! No, Don, don’t be rash. Don’t expose your- 
self, keep out of the moonlight. Keep off the river 
banks when the waters are laughing. Don’t sit under 
moss-covered trees or among the blooming oleanders 
when the mocking-birds are singing. Blast the bloom- 
ing things down there, anyhow! Freeze ’em cold, 
Don, freeze ’em. It was on the Indian River that 
the fellows got it last year. It is a dangerous stream. 
Keep off its banks.’ ” 

“The governor was scared, sure,” I said, “and I 
don’t wonder that you are scared, but brace up. 
Keep out of the moonlight. You seem to be poking 
around in it every night. Cut it out.” 

“No, I am going to light out, and that right away. 
He who runs away may come back to marry some 
other day. I am off.” 

“Oh, no, you are not. Your kind of a mood does 
not last long. Get a better grip on the situation.” 

“It is the situation that I don’t like. One girl has 
an engagement ring on her finger and the other an 
impenetrable look on her face, and where would I 
be if cupid and the climate and the whisper of the 
winds got in their work on me? I don’t think the 
engagement ring fits very tight, and I have noticed a 
troubled expression on her face when she looks at 
it, but that may only mean more trouble when it 
comes to a show down. Safety first, is my motto.” 

“But you can’t go now; you have not seen the 
orange trees in bloom and they make the country 
look like a bridal procession.” 

“I don’t need to wait for that. I had a dream the 
other night, and it was full of orange blossoms. 
They were all over the room, out in the hall, down 


40 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the path, and I was wading through them to church 
with a blooming young lady on my arm who was 
covered with orange blossoms; and we went into a 
bower of orange branches, and a fresh young minister 
stood up and made some flowery remarks about the 
tie which ties a man up for better or worse. There 
is a warning in dreams, and I feel warned. Tomor- 
row noon the flyer will whisk me away where the 
winds whistle and the birds don’t sing.” 

“No, not tomorrow, for you know that is the day 
set for the big swim on the peninsula, the dip in the 
sea.” 

“I had forgotten that. I’ll wait.” 

“Good. You need to be soaked in salt water.” 

There was more on Dinsmore’s mind in this mat- 
ter than the conversation revealed, and it was my pain- 
ful privilege to discover the fact later on. 

During that evening there was a sensation at the 
river front which attracted crowds of spectators. A 
cool wind had come down from the north and 
ruffled the waters and caused them to flash with 
phosphorescent light, so that the river looked like a 
flame of fire as far as the eye could see. It seemed 
so real that the occupants of a house projecting 
over the water fled from the building, fearing that 
it was about to catch fire. 

I asked Bob Bamby, who was somewhat excited 
by the spectacle, how it made him feel. “It makes 
me feel like an old sinner,” he replied. “I used to 
think when I heard a hot sermon that I would like 
to jump into the river and get cool; but if the Lord 
can set the river on fire, he can set the world on fire, 
and then where would us old chaps get off?” 

“Do you know how it made me feel?” said Don. 

“I presume it made you think that you would have 


NEW ARRIVALS 


41 


missed seeing something if you had gone home be- 
fore it happened.” 

*^No, it made me think that something is going 
to happen to me if I stay, and the river seems to be 
mixed up in it. This thing tonight got on my nerves.” 

“Go to bed and sleep it off your nerves ; you will 
be all right in the morning.” 

“What did it make you think?” asked Don: 

“It made me think that nature is sensational.” 

“It got in the limelight tonight in this neck of the 
woods, all right. But, of course, if nature is sensa- 
tional, you think that a preacher has a right to be 
sensational and indulge in a lot of pyrotechnics in 
the pulpit?” 

“No, not quite, but I do think that a preacher has 
a right to be a sensation if he is big enough.” 

“Not sensational, but a sensation! That is a nice 
distinction, more comfortable to the celebrities than 
to the crowd. But here come the young ladies. I 
should like to know what they think about it. 

“It made me think that we cannot trust the sur- 
face,” said Miss Searcy. “What a glow and flame 
the river did set up, and down below the waters were 
just the same as ever. That is the way with people. 
They burst into a flame of fine sentiment because 
they think it the proper thing, and underneath they 
are the same old human natures, cold, selfish, sordid. 
What did you think, Ethel?” 

“A river,” she replied, “always makes me think 
of time — ‘Down the river of time we glide’ — and when 
I saw the beautiful river of which we are so proud 
putting up that grand illusion or phantasm, it seemed 
an illustration of what the twentieth century now ap- 
pears to have done to us. It came in with all the bells 
ringing, all the writers boasting, and all the pulpits 
and platforms proclaiming the Twentieth Century 


42 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


Civilization as the greatest thing ever. And now 
where are we? Don’t we know that much of it was 
only surface seeming, that underneath were reaction- 
ary currents, human tides hardly touched by real 
progress, dead waters, depths which moral regeneration 
had not reached. Don’t call me pessimistic if I say 
that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that time 
was handing us out a reactionary century, and we did 
not know it.” 

‘‘But it is a long way yet to the end of the 
hundred years,” I said, “and the century may make 
good before it quits.” 

“Certainly, and we shall have to buckle down and 
help it to make good.’’ 


CHAPTER V. 

A Day of Danger. 

Oh, thou vast ocean, ever sounding sea. 

Thou symbol of a drear immensity, 

Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep 
Is a Giant’s slumber, loud and deep. 

Oh, wonderful thou art, great element, 

And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent, 

And lovely in repose; thy summer form 
Is beautiful. 

H OW well the poet said it. The sea can be so 
beautiful and so terrible, such a shout of many 
voices calling to heaven, and such a gulf of 
death, calling to the demons of despair! 

The beach on the peninsula was broad and beau- 
tiful and strewn with many colored shells, a famous 
driveway for automobiles, with its long level of hard 
sand and the waters gleaming in the sunlight, reach- 
ing to far off shores of other lands. 

A throng had gathered as we appeared upon the 
scene, and the air was ringing with shouts of delight. 
But there were long swells and breakers were be- 
ginning to tumble across an in-coming tide. 

When we were all ready for the plunge. Miss 
Kingsley exclaimed, ‘‘There comes Bob with a long 
rope in his hand; what is he carrying that around 
after us for?” But Bob was muttering to himself: 
“They don’t know this treacherous old coast as I 
do. Didn’t I see that young man carried out to doom 
last year and a hundred people stood here wringing 
their hands and lookin’ at him?” 

43 


44 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


The young women had taken swimming lessons 
as part of their athletics in college, and with practice 
at the summer resorts had become experts in the 
water. Don and myself had begun the business in 
the old swimming pool when we were boys and felt 
pretty sure of ourselves in an ordinary sea, but the 
heavy swells which were driving against the beach 
had an alarming aspect. 

“Let us give the mariner^s salute,” said Miss 
Searcy, and with a wave of her hand toward the great 
ocean she repeated the lines: 

“The sea, the sea, the open sea. 

The blue, the fresh, the ever free; 

Without a mark, without a bound, 

It runneth the earth’s wide regions round. 

I love, oh, how I love to lie 
On the wide resistless tide.” 

For a little while the waters tried to behave them- 
selves and give us a chance ; but their boisterous spirit 
was too much for them, and the spectators on the 
shore began to shout, “Be careful, be careful!” The 
tide is rising. Come nearer shore.” The two 
cousins sensed the danger and started for the beach, 
but a young girl near them began to scream and they 
went to her assistance. While helping her to safety, 
a big breaker struck them and threw Miss Searcy far 
to one side, but carried the other two near the beach 
and they reached the shore. 

The back action of another swell swept Miss 
Searcy further out, and she was now in great peril. 
It was in vain that she plunged through the crest or 
swam across the slanting waters. Every stroke only 
left her further out at sea. I struggled hard to reach 
her, but was carried further away and nearer shore. 
Dinsmore was more successful and finally grasped 
her when exhausted and sinking. But it was a battle 


A DAY OF DANGER 


45 


with despair. They were like straws on the mad 
waters, and seemed lost. Then there was a great 
shout on the beach. Bob Bamby had rushed into the 
surf, and with a mighty swing of his arm and a loud 
cry he flung the rope far out to the helpless swim- 
mers. Dinsmore threw himself toward the rope, 
caught it, and with the other hand grasping his com- 
panion he held fast to both while a score of hands 
drew them quickly to the beach. 

Women wept for joy as they took the half-con- 
scious girl in their arms, and strong men were wiping 
their eyes. *Tt was the narrowest escape that ever 
I have seen on this edge of the sea,” said an old 
fisherman. 

On the way home I said to Dinsmore, *‘Now you 
see why your departure for the north was delayed. 
Providence wanted to use you to save that splendid 
young woman’s life.” And the thought also came 
to me that this might be another case of a hero sav- 
ing his own. 

The next day Bob Bamby rushed into his house 
exclaiming, ‘^Lucy, Lucy, look here! See what Col. 
Kingsley gave me — a hundred dollar check. A 
hundred dollars, because I threw that rope and saved 
his niece, with the young man thrown in.” 

‘*My, Bob, wasn’t that nice! A whole hundred 
dollars! I wish you could throw a rope like that 
every day. We’d move into a bigger house.” 

“So do I, Lucy. No Til take that back. I don’t 
never want to throw a rope like that again. It was 
awful, awful, Lucy, to see them young people 
struggling and both just ready to go down forever. 
I wouldn’t see it again for hundreds and hundreds of 
dollars.” 

“But what are you going to do with all that money. 
Bob? You won’t fool it away, will you?” 


46 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“No, Lucy, I am going to divide with you and 
make it fifty-fifty. It’ll buy your new hats the rest 
of your life.” 

Bob kept his word far enough to hand Lucy the 
fifty, but that night as the train was pulling out for 
the North he slipped aboard and went up to Jackson- 
ville. When he came back his money was gone, and 
he looked as if he had been through the war. 

At our next mid-week meeting we had a little 
thrill. In my remarks I had talked educational re- 
ligion and criticised evangelists and revivals. After 
I sat down the air seemed rather chilly and the dead 
silence was becoming painful, when a good strong 
voice in the back of the room broke out with the 
hymn, 


“Throw out the life line, throw out the life line. 

Some one is sinking today.” 

I 

They all took it up and sang it with tears in their 
voices. The moment they stopped a man was on his 
feet, saying, “I am from Chicago, and I was an awful 
sinner, down and out, until I went into the Pacific 
Garden Mission one night, where they preach the 
old gospel and have a revival all the year round. I 
was saved, bless the Lord. 

“The brother believes in education. So do I, as 
far as it goes. But education generally goes to the 
head, not to the heart. I found that out to my sor- 
row, for I graduated from college, and then went to 
the devil. People thought I was awfully smart, and 
I got to thinking myself that I could outwit the Ten 
Commandments and go my own pace and get away 
with it. I did. I got into the ditch, and then no- 
body thought I was smart. I was a shining light in 
the slums, but the shine was all on my clothes. I 


A DAY OF DANGER 


47 


felt like a capitalist after I had begged a quarter 
and got drunk, but like an outcast when I sobered 
up. I wanted to die and I wanted to live, and I 
couldn’t do both. It is an awful feeling to have. 

“Then Harry Monroe got his arm around me and 
called me brother. It was a new thing for me, and 
went down where there was still a little something 
in me; and when he told me that Jesus Christ could 
make a new man of me, I believed and was changed. 
It is a glorious gospel, and a great salvation. 

“Education could not save the young woman who 
was about to perish in the sea. She had been taught 
to swim, taught by an athletic expert, but the sea 
was too much for her, that swirling, awful, rolling 
sea. Life is too dangerous a sea for education alone 
to make us safe. Oh the folly of thinking that you 
can put a generation of young people through the 
schools and then turn them out into a world where 
every kind of a wind is blowing, and currents and 
under currents are making madness, and still all will 
be well ! All will not be well, unless you let Almighty 
God take a hand in it. 

“They say that they don’t believe in revivals be- 
cause they stir up the emotions. I used to get off 
that kind of stuff myself, and then I would go to a 
theatre and laugh and cry over a play that stirred my 
emotions. And a lot of other people were there who 
didn’t believe in evangelists, but did believe in passion 
plays. How they do blubber over an imaginary sin- 
ner and then scoff and fuss because somebody prays 
with tears in his voice for the real sinner. ‘Cant in 
revivals!’ There is more cant against revivals than 
you could chase down in an age. The church which 
is as cold as an ice house is afraid of a revival, afraid 
it might melt the ice. Preachers who read nice little 
essays that would make good non-conductors to wrap 


48 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


around electric wires are afraid of excitement. Is it 
any wonder that the pastor of a great aristocratic 
church said to his brethren, ‘We are exhausted bat- 
teries.’ 

“I don’t want to overdo what I am saying, but I 
think it would do some pulpits good to be struck by 
thunder and lightning.” 

I told the brother to come again with another 
charge of thpnder and lightning, and the people sang 
the closing hymn with great fervor. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A Romance With a Missing Link. 

I pass like night from land to land, 

I have strange power of speech, 

That moment that his face I see 
I know the man that must hear me. 

Oh, wedding guest, this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea. 

So lonely ’twas that God himself 
Scarce seemed to be. 

44 T WANT to have a talk with you, Mr. Liddon,” 
J|_ said Miss Searcy as she was passing out of 
church the next Sunday. *‘Can you call tomor- 
row afternoon?” 

I made the call, with the following development: 

‘T feel troubled,” said Miss Searcy in beginning 
the conversation.” 

'Wou ought to feel glad,” I interrupted. 

*‘So I should, and so I do; but matters get mixed 
in life, and a little accident may have more than a 
little connection with something else. I escaped with 
my life from that peril in the sea, but my engage- 
ment ring slipped off my finger and is now at the 
bottom of the ocean. The loss of the ring itself is not 
serious, but what troubles me is that it had slipped 
off my heart before it slipped off my finger. I know 
this is a rather delicate matter to talk about with a 
young man, but professionally you are supposed to be 
as old as the seers and wise as the sages and you can 
forget your youth and remember your calling.” 

49 


50 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“Well, ril forget and remember. Go on if you 
think I can be of any assistance to you.” 

“As I said, the ring came off easily, for it never 
had really been on my heart. I was holding it at 
arm’s length. To make the story short, we both were 
seniors in college, and you know how wise seniors 
can be. So we said that we did not believe in spoony 
love nor moonstruck romance. We kept out of the 
moonlight and read together, read philosophical 
treatises on the subject, psychology and all that. We 
talked over our ideals, the ideal man and the ideal 
woman, the ideal husband and the ideal wife. In 
fact I got my head so full of ideal notions that I 
could feel them coming out at night and dancing on 
my forehead like little spooks. But mind you, there 
had been no avowal on either side. And when mat- 
ters had about reached the limit along the ideal route 
the young man burst into a little confidential declara- 
tion that I was his ideal. I was seized with a cor- 
responding fit of confidential admission and replied 
that he measured up to my ideal, and perhaps some- 
thing over.” 

“Then what?” 

“Nothing but awkward silence,” she replied with 
an amused look. “We were conducting the affair 
along philosophical lines, you know, and we sat for 
a few minutes like Grecian statues or wax figures 
along a wall. Neither of us seemed to know what 
to say or to do next. When the silence was becom- 
ing embarrassing he got up and took his departure, 
remarking that he would see me later. 

“Now I know that it all was so wise that it was 
not wise at all. It was a high and lofty performance, 
a sixteen-story affair, with the old story left out, all 
head and no heart. And a love affair can not be 
worked that way. We can’t put the beauty of a 


A ROMANCE WITH A MISSING LINK 


51 


magnolia flower into an algebraic equation, nor 
measure the song of a mocking bird with a foot rule, 
nor catch the blue of the sea in a pint cup. And so 
it is with love. It does not go by rule nor cut and 
dried philosophy. Young men and women meet one 
another and there is no love. Then suddenly a young 
man and woman look into each other’s eyes, and 
their hearts are aglow. The young man had his ideal 
before he met her — he was going to marry a blonde, 
but she is a brunette. She was going to marry a tall 
man, but he is a short one. And so it goes, ideals 
scatter when love flashes. I know that the head ought 
to have something to do with such affairs, but if you 
shut out the heart there is sure to be trouble. Some- 
times I wish that I did not have a heart, it can ache 
so. People think that I am always happy — they don’t 
know how utterly wretched I have been when I looked 
at that misplaced ring. I want to keep my word, but 
I do not want to keep my heart in cold storage. 
They call me beautiful, as if that was everything. I 
am getting tired of it. Sometimes I wish that my 
mirror would make faces at me, turn up its nose at 
me. Actually I envied a homely girl whom I met on 
the street the other day. She can live a more natural 
life than I can. It is not easy to keep your poise 
when you overhear people saying to one another at 
social functions, Tsn’t she beautiful, isn’t she beau- 
tiful!’ I am not a movie, a picture show. Woman- 
hood must have a soul or it is not womanhood. 

^We have reversed the order of nature. Out there 
it is the male bird which puts on the gay plumage and 
is beautiful. The female bird is plain, dresses in 
drab. But women put on fine feathers, ribbons and 
colors. It is half of her existence. I tell you, Mr. 
Liddon, it is bad for her and the rest of the world. 
It makes trouble, heart tragedies.” 


52 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“Yes, but the Creator loves the beautiful,^’ I said; 
“He makes the flowers and the colors in the rain- 
bow/' 

“I know it is so, but we can't live on flowers, and 
chasing rainbows is disappointing. We put flowers 
in the center of the table to look at, we can't eat 
them. The Master had so much to say about the 
bread of life, the water of life. We must have bread 
to feed our hunger, water to quench our thirst. Our 
bodies must be fed clear out to the last little cell. 
Starve a muscle and there is disease. Starve a nerve 
and there is a case for a doctor. And it is so with our 
hearts and souls. A woman's heart must be fed." 

“Why confine the remark to woman? Man has a 
heart, too." 

“I presume he does, but I am talking about my 
troubles, and you know that the modern preachers 
are making so much of intellectual lines. We are both 
advanced thinkers, but this mistaken love affair of 
mine, with its cool, critical method, makes me feel 
some misgivings about my religious theories. For 
Christianity is God's great love affair with the human 
kind — ‘God so loved the world.' It can't be reduced 
to mathematics. It cannot be all sized up or sized 
down by the rules of criticism, higher or lower. It 
is not a philosophy nor a psychology. It is a love 
affair. Men and women fall in love with one another 
because they are made that way. Say the same thing 
about God and humanity, and you have said the most 
important thing that can be said about religion." 

“But your love affair is what has given you 
trouble." 

“It has, because there was a missing link — there 
was no love in it, and that is the trouble with a good 
deal of religion. There is a missing link, and it is 
not to be found in the fossils and bones of a dead 


A ROMANCE WITH A MISSING LINK 


53 


world. A scientist goes poking around in geological 
strata for what he calls the missing link. He could 
throw down his pick and spade and find a- missing 
link in his own heart. Professors in the schools and 
preachers in the pulpits try to link us to the animal 
world. What we need is to be linked to God.” 

‘Wes, but when you say that you are not living up 
to your reputation for being one of the most brilliant 
skeptics that ever was in your college.” 

“Brilliant nothing! It was only borrowed and 
only in my head. Now I have a heart trouble, and 
when my heart aches I seem to hear that wonderful 
voice speaking to me, which said, ‘Let not your heart 
be troubled.’ He did not waste time on stacks of 
stuff which are only words. He went straight to the 
spot.” 

Here she broke down and sobbed. 

When she had recovered, I said to her, “If you 
hear that voice you do not need to hear my voice. 
‘He spake as never man spake.’ ” 

“But what shall I do with my engagement with 
the young man?” 

“Explain to him that you want to call it off be- 
cause it never was on. Nobody can say anything 
wiser than that.” 

“But I do not want to be thought fickle or dis- 
loyal.” 

“No, but there is another kind of loyalty at stake, 
loyalty to the truth of the matter. The truth is that 
you made a mistake, that you do not love the young 
man. That is something which you seem unable to 
change. The engagement is something which can be 
changed, if the young man is reasonable. You have 
the right to ask him to release you.” 

She sent her explanation and request for a release 
to the young man, and he promptly released her. 


54 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


After I went back to my room I took up a book 
but could not read. That word, “a missing link,” 
kept tramping up and down my thoughts all the time. 
I thought of the great Wellington, mighty general, 
but in the morning his boys were told to pass into 
his library; he said, “good morning,” and they passed 
out. There was a missing link. Napoleon burst into 
tears when he saw a dog wailing at the side of his 
dead master on the field of battle. He felt very sorry 
for the dog, but he shed no tears over the myriads of 
men slain in his campaigns. There was a missing 
link. Charles Sumner delivered masterly orations in 
the campaign for the freedom of the slave, but he 
had no interest in individuals. There was a missing 
link. I thought of the sermons which are brilliant, 
but there is a missing link, of the homes which 
would be happy but for a missing link, of the re- 
forms which would lift society, but there is a missing 
link. We heat the iron, we smite it on the anvil; but 
when we look at the chain, a link which we need is not 
there. As the troubled young woman said, why look 
for a missing link among the fossils in clay and rock, 
when there are so many missing links where life 
throbs, hearts bleed, and souls cry. 


CHAPTER VII. 

To Be or Not to Be A Bachelor. 

D on DINSMORE’S determination to depart and 
break the spell which he feared might interfere 
with his program of business weakened. He lin- 
gered and continued to linger. I also lingered. When 
my month was up, I wrote to the church officials that 1 
saw an opportunity to achieve some important results by 
a further stay. I did not specify what they were, and 1 
doubt whether I could have furnished a bill of particu- 
lars to myself. Don said that he found it good for 
his health to remain. I replied, ^'So it is, Don, but the 
plain English of it is that you are in love.’’ “I do not 
plead guilty to the indictment,” he replied, “but what if 
I am? It is an old human right and there is special 
reason for it with such charming attractions close at 
hand.” 

“Then why don’t you move on the works ?” 

“Because I might lose out. You can’t always tell 
what the other party will do. Men have suffered pain- 
ful surprises as the result of over-confidence. More- 
over I am not sure that I should be among the fortunate 
class who find themselves ‘happy though married.’ ” 

“Don’t get off that kind of talk. That will do for 
men in a club, blowing wreaths of tobacco smoke 
around the room, men from whom the world has nothing 
much to expect and cares little to respect. They ought 
to go away off and build a city for themselves, a city 
without residence districts, without long streets lined 

56 


56 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


with happy homes where mothers stand on the porch 
and watch with loving look the boys and girls hurrying 
away to school, where little children run down the walk 
to meet daddy and lead him into the house and to the 
waiting supper. A city where there would be only 
bachelor lodging houses, ten stories high, sixteen stories 
high — the more bachelors the more stories. Houses full 
of bachelors, young bachelors, old bachelors, bald-headed 
bachelors; bachelors who grumbled when they went up- 
stairs and when they came downstairs, who knocked the 
weather man when the sun shone and when it rained; 
jolly bachelors who never saved a dollar and never paid 
back a dollar that they borrowed ; bachelors who did not 
know when night ended nor when morning began and 
who fumbled around the keyhole in the other man’s door ; 
bachelors with the knot in their necktie under their ear, 
and a pant leg in a boot top; bachelors with the buttons 
all gone and their clothes held together with safety pins ; 
bachelors with the dust of ages on their coats, their shoes 
unblacked, their faces unshaven, and hair uncombed; 
bachelors throwing themselves out of the windows be- 
cause life was not worth living. Wouldn’t that be a 
happy town ?” 

'‘Let me get out of here quick,” exclaimed Don, “be- 
fore I fall over dead.” 

“No, hear me to the end, you sinner. Two Presi- 
dents of the United States entered the White House as 
bachelors. One repented, humbled himself at the altar, 
and an angel came and touched his lips with a live coal 
from the lips of love ; and he uttered wise sayings which 
the people passed along, and they gave him a second 
term. The other bachelor was impenitent, obdurate, and 
hardened his heart more and more. He was not re- 
elected, could not be. Moreover the Union began to dis- 
solve before his term was up, or rather, was down, for it 
was all down. He did not know anything about unions. 


TO BE OR NOT TO BE A BACHELOR 


57 


He was a solitaire with no shine in him, the most un- 
fortunate happening in the history of the White House. 
A man with a domestic habit and matrimonial experience 
might have prevented the dissolution of the Union. After 
his election and before his inauguration General Jack- 
son's wife died of a broken heart, because they had 
abused Old Hickory so badly in the campaign. His 
wife's death made him mad through and through, and 
when Southern leaders began to stir up a racket and 
talk dissolution of the Union he got out a big stick and 
reduced the rebellious members of the household to order. 
The family is the unit of the state, and there can not be a 
United States without it. Therefore why resist the im- 
pulse to enter the state of matrimony ?" 

“But why do you resist it yourself? You are as old 
as I am and wiser, and away up in your calling." 

“Perhaps it is because I have not fallen in love." 

“I think you would not have very far to fall if you 
let go, judging from what I have seen down here." 

Just then the telephone bell rang, and when I was 
through with it Dinsmore stood at the window. After 
a few minutes he said, “There is a couple out in front 
who make life miserable for each other. I never pass 
them that they are not spatting about money or some- 
thing. What would you do if you had a wife who was 
always nagging you for money?" 

I would reason with her, tell her that every establish- 
ment must have a treasurer or it would soon go bank- 
rupt. There has got to be somebody to hold fast to the 
money. Even a two-billion-dollar Congress has its watch 
dog of the Treasury." 

“Yes, I know that," he replied, “but some men are 
doggoned mean to their wives and children. When I 
see how free with their money some fellows are while 
they are courting their girls and then see what mean 
tightwads they are after the honeymoon, I feel that they 


58 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


ought to be prosecuted for getting goods under false 
pretenses/' 

‘‘You are right, and when I see how very nice some 
girls are before marriage, too sweet for anything, and 
then see what sulky mopes they are after marriage, I 
think they should be proceeded against for passing coun- 
terfeit currency.” 

“What would you say to a woman if she wanted to 
buy all the time? That is what seems to be the matter 
with this couple in front. The man complains that the 
woman is always wanting to buy, buy.” 

“I suppose he does not want to buy ; men don’t. Oh, 
no. A man becomes a millionaire in the oil business, 
and then he buys up all the other oil wells. He becomes 
a multi-millionaire, and he buys copper mines, coal mines, 
railroads, factories, banks, everything. He would buy 
the Milky Way if it were not so high, and mark up the 
price of milk and butter. If the goods are not on 
the bargain counter, he makes a bargain by manipulat- 
ing the market and starting a panic. But if a woman 
rushes off to buy a remnant for 29 cents or a pair of 
stockings for half price, he wants to know why women 
have such a mania for buying things. When women 
can buy houses and lands as men do they will not run 
the rounds of the stores buying a spool of thread in 
one and a paper of hairpins in another. Buying is not 
woman’s passion alone, it is the human passion. Pos- 
session is the mighty objective. Honest men pay for 
the goods, thieves steal them, and so do nations. Ameri- 
ca is about the only country that ever paid another peo- 
ple for land. The other nations made war and took 
territory by force. It is to woman’s credit that she 
would rather buy at a bargain than to take by force.” 

“Let us get back to things present. What would 
you do if the girl you had in mind was all for the world 
and did not want to try to go to heaven, and you did not 


TO BE OR NOT TO BE A BACHELOR 


59 


\vant to go to the other place. Where would we go?” 

“Go on a honeymoon, of course, and after that you 
could work it out between you whether you would make 
your home a heaven or a hades.” 

“Then heaven and hell are not original propositions 
but states which we makes up ourselves.” 

“Well, a lot of people work pretty hard on the latter 
proposition.” 

“Sure they do. But what if the girl was too much 
of the other kind and wanted to go to church as regular- 
ly as the bell rang, while you wanted to stay at home 
and read the Sunday newspapers 

“In that case I should reason with myself, not with 
her. I should say to myself, what shall it profit a man 
to fill his mind with all manner of stuff and let his soul 
go lean and hungry ? to read how Corbett whipped Sulli- 
van, or Smith eloped with Brown’s wife, or another 
Chicago woman murdered another Chicago man, or a 
New Yorker stole a million and hurried off to Europe 
for his health; when he could go to church and get in 
touch with the mind of God and see visions which reach 
as far as destiny. I tell you, Don, the woman who hears 
the church bell ring has the best of it. We want fresh 
air for the body; she wants a fresh breeze for her soul. 
We like to go up into the mountains and look across 
the ranges of hills. She goes up into the Mount of God 
and sees the land which is far away. It lifts her up 
all the week. She feels that she is living for eternity. 
Last summer I was up in Maine for my vacation; and 
they told me about a woman who had lived in the com- 
munity, but became insane and then died. After the 
funeral her husband said he didn’t know why Mary Ann 
took crazy, for to his knowledge she had not been out 
of the kitchen for twenty years. Not out of the kitchen 
for twenty years, and he didn’t know why she took 
crazy! Isn’t going to church better than going crazy?” 


60 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“What a defender of woman you are! Why don’t 
you preach a sermon about it?” 

“If I were a married man I could, but being a single 
man the congregation would go out of church saying, 'He 
has it bad. I wonder who the girl is ?’ Then they would 
begin to whisper, T know who she is ; I saw him look her 
way three times in tw'o seconds.’ ” 

“Ha, Ha! I will watch you myself now.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A Hint to Fire Up. 

44 T AM glad the parson knocked out that hot here- 
^ after which youVe been shaking at me” 

‘ It was Bob, talking to Lucy in loud tones in the 
midst of a family jar. 

“Yes,” she snapped back, “you fellows who go fishing 
while your wives are washing for the neighbors and who 
spend your money in the saloons and never have none 
to buy us a new dress, you like to have them elegant, 
patent leather, new-fangled preachers come down here 
and throw cold water on all the hot texts in the Bible. 
I tell, you Bob Bamby, I don’t like it. I wish they 
would stay up there until they get so froze up they 
couldn’t do without a fire. But I want you to under- 
stand right here and now. Bob, that if the preachers 
don’t make it hot for you, I will. You’ll never catch me 
starching up your shirt to go and hear him preach, 
again. You bet I won’t” 

“Humph’, Humph’, I don’t need to hear any more. 
If it’s all the same in the hereafter whether I go fishing 
or go to church on Sunday, or whether I drink whisky 
or drink water. I’ll take the fishing and the whisky, 
and don’t you forget it.” 

“I won’t, and you won’t forget it either, what you’ll 
get the next time you come home drunk.” 

“I promise you I’ll be good, Lucy. I’ll never touch 
the cussed stuff again, and I’ll tell the parson to put 
more sulphur in his sermons. It will help to brace me 
61 


62 


A PROGRBSSIVE PREACHER 


Up. ril say to him kind of easy like that his preachin’ 
is all right for them nice young women, but not penetrat- 
in’ enough for a tough old customer like me. It is too 
weak for my nerves.” 

“And I’ll starch your shirt again. Bob, and get you 
a nice new necktie, and make you look like one of them 
fellows that comes down from New York.” 

“That was a good one on you, Liddon,” said Don, 
who also had overheard the racket. 

The next day when I was out walking, a lady came 
down her steps as she saw me approaching and asked me 
if I could spare a few minutes, while she talked to me 
about a matter of some concern to herself. 

“I greatly admire your preaching, Mr. Liddon,” she 
said, after we were seated in the parlor. “It is full of 
new, fresh thought, not the old humdrum patter, patter. 
But a man has come to this resort whom I knew before 
I was married, in fact we were much interested in one 
another. But changes in habitation and some other 
things separated us and I married another man. My 
old friend has come here, I don’t know just why. I 
hope it was not because he had learned that I was here. 
I don’t know, I say. Only I do think that he does not 
seem to be fully aware that we can’t be to each other 
as we once were, that there is a gulf fixed. And what 
is worse, I don’t feel quite so sure of myself as I did 
before he came. This is frank, but it troubles me, and I 
am talking to you as a minister. There might have been 
more romance in my marriage I admit, but my husband 
is a respectable man, and I won’t tolerate that affinity 
stuff that we read about in the fiction of the day and in 
the newspapers, too. Affinity is only another name for 
wayward affections. There are men and women in high 
life who ought to be locked up for vagrancy, vagrancy 
of the affections. No, none of that for me. And yet 
I find that my resolutions are not as strong as they were. 


A HINT TO FIRE UP 


63 


I need bracing up. Sometimes I wish I could hear a 
sermon which would scare the wits out of me. This 
may sound rude or crude to you, but it expresses my feel- 
ings. And there are others. Women not well mated, and 
siren voices whispering through the leaves of the litera- 
ture of the day, and whispering in their own hearts. 
They do so much need bracing up preaching. Nothing 
is worse for them than to explain away the warning 
lights which the Bible has hung along the path of life, 
or to soften down the thunder which roars along the 
slippery hillsides. Let them scoff at Jonathan Edwards’ 
sermon on ‘Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God,’ but 
I tell you that there are men who need to be in the hands 
of an angry God. It is better to shake men over hell 
than to have them sending girls and women down to 
perdition. 

“Now here is a personal word, and I hope you will 
forgive me if I offend you. It is this, your sermons do 
not seem to strengthen my resolution. I come away 
admiring them, but my feet do not seem to be on such 
firm ground as they used to be. I wish you would preach 
a great, rousing sermon on sin, something which would 
make one feel as if steel rods had been put in their de- 
termination. I tell you, Mr. Liddon, we need protecting, 
we need fortresses to run to when we sense danger ; and 
if the church is not our fortress, where will we find one? 
If the pulpit does not have a warning, strengthening 
voice, why should tempted mortals be in the pews?” 

The next Sunday I missed the lady from the congre- 
gation, and on inquiry I was told that she had suddenly 
packed up and left the resort, remarking to a friend that 
she wanted to get back to her husband and her old pastor. 

The interview disturbed me and I began to ask my- 
self whether my preaching was bracing people up or 
taking the props out from under them. 


64 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“You have been in a brown study all evening/^ said 
Dinsmore. “What is the matter?” 

“I have been wondering what a preacher is in the 
world for,” I replied. 

“I have felt the same kind of wonder, myself, at 
various times,” remarked Don. “I know what a lawyer 
is here for, to go to the legislature and make laws ; and 
then come home and tell judges and juries what the laws 
don’t mean, and dispute with other lawyers as to what 
they do mean; and get paid for it a coming and' a going. 
That seems puzzling enough; but it is mild compared 
with some phases presented by the ministry of the day.” 

“Certainly, because law only puts the lid on, but a 
minister, like young Watt, has to know why the lid is 
knocked off, and he has to turn human energies and 
passions into a power for good. His calling is as com- 
plicated as human life and as high and low as moral 
possibility.” 

“I know it, and sometimes I almost tremble when I 
see a preacher rise to begin his sermon. There is many 
a moral tragedy fighting its little battle in the hearts of 
the people whom he addresses, and he can so easily give 
the wrong turn to the lever. If a man or a woman is 
near the edge of a precipice a little mistake may send 
them over.” 

“What would you do with this talk of making preach- 
ing hotter against sin ?” I asked. 

“If the situation seemed to demand it, I should turn 
on the heat. It surely is in the Bible, and fear is a 
fundamental element of life. It is an instinct of self- 
preservation. Whenever there is danger there must be 
fear or the danger will undo us. Fear warns us to run 
or resist or save ourselves by whatever way is possible. 
It is a radical mistake for a minister to think that he can 
ignore so fundamental a fact as fear. It would be amus- 
ing if it were not otherwise, to see how bravely some 


A HINT TO FIRE UP 


65 


ministers can preach against fear in the pulpit and how 
constantly they are controlled by it in the ordinary re- 
lations of life. Fear, I say, is human, and if preaching 
is human business you cannot ignore fear. It is only 
the superhuman that finally can cast out fear.'^ 

“That sounds theological enough. Where did you 
get it?” 

“I was raised on it.” 

“You mean that some welts were raised on your 
back?” 

“No, Liddon, I never had any of those dreadful in- 
terviews with my father which some men so fondly re- 
member, and my mother never licked me because she 
loved me. But every Sunday afternoon she took us 
through one of those Old Testament stories in which 
fear and hope and danger and deliverance play such 
great parts, and the lessons stuck to me through the 
week. And this reminds me that those stories have 
propped up a lot of boys, propped them up until they 
could stand on the strong legs of good men. I don’t 
like the way some preachers are knocking out those 
props now. Business is pretty full of trouble and tight 
places these days, and the religious man is braced up 
by thinking that the Lord helps. But if he has been 
holding on by his teeth through the week and then goes 
to church on Sunday to be told that the Lord did not 
deliver Daniel from the Lions’ Den or take care of 
Joseph down in Egypt, the effect is not good for his 
moral health. It does not reinforce his moral courage. 
He sees that whatever else these attacks on the historical 
facts may mean, down underneath is a denial of the 
supernatural, an elimination of Divine assistance in the 
affairs of life. Of course such a story as that of Jonah 
presents difficulties, but they are small compared with 
the difficulty of living a religious life on a basis of no 
Divine help. It must have been far less difficult for a 


66 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


whale to swallow Jonah than it is to swallow the Bible 
after the critics are through with it/' 

“But what if the critics have the facts and the other 
people do not?" 

“The critics have the facts as they think they ought 
to have been, not as history says they were. They sit 
down in their studies and make history after a theory. 
It is like pouring clear water into a glass and calling that 
history, when in fact muddy streams, overflowing 
rivers poured turbid and tawny waters into the great 
currents and tides which washed the shores of time and 
flooded and littered them with wrecks and debris and 
drift. Criticism is idealism; life is realism." 

“That sounds smart. Where did you get it?" 

“By rubbing up against it." 


CHAPTER IX. 

The Beauty Spot of America. 

A JOLLY man of the world who had just come 
up the coast and was stopping at the hotel 
said to me: “Have you ever been at Palm 
Beach? It is great. I advise you to see it and see 
it soon, for life is uncertain. You can get a room 
at the Royal Poinciana for a hundred dollars a day, 
and up,’’ he added with a chuckle. “Take a barrel 
of money with you, break in the head and have a 
good time. You can eat, drink, and be sober — when 
the clerk presents the bill. The people down there 
have nothing to do but dress for the golf-ground, 
dress again for the 11 o’clock dip in the sea, and again 
for the 4 o’clock tea under the cocoanut trees, and 
again for dinner, and then put on their glad rags for 
the evening dance.” 

“And say, you never saw such a glitter of glad 
rags in your life, gowns paneled and trimmed with 
gold lace, pearls, collars of them, chains of them; 
diamonds, strings of them, necklaces, bracelets, clus- 
ters, buckles; and all the colors of the rainbow. It 
has the dazzle of every other resort in America beat 
to a frazzle. You can have the time of your life 
down there.” 

“But perhaps my idea of a good time and yours 
are not the same,” I replied. 

“Oh, that won’t hurt you. Flagler is a minister’s 
son and he plays the Puritan when he feels like it. 
67 


68 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


That is the funny thing about it, the rich snobs and 
swell people all chasing along the trail made by this 
son of a poor Presbyterian minister, on the East coast 
of Florida. They fly high until he says the word, and 
then they have to lie low. He won’t have any golf 
on Sunday or dancing on Sunday evening. Some 
jolly fellows thought they would show the old chief, 
as they call him, a thing or two, and went out to play 
golf on Sunday morning. He brought them up stand- 
ing. 

“Take a run down there, I tell you, and see the 
most beautiful place in America, a paradise which is 
no dream or future fancy, but spot cash. I am going 
to give Mr. Kingsley a hint, and he will take you 
down in his car.” 

And so it happened in the evening that Mr Kings- 
ley called up and said, “We are going to motor down 
to Palm Beach tomorrow and we want you and Mr. 
Dinsmore to go along. We shall start early and make 
the run in the morning and come back in the eve- 
ning.” 

We went, the big limousine full, and one of Flori- 
da’s joyous days smiling along the way. Now the 
road wound through stately pines, now through live 
oaks hung with moss, past a stretch of palmetto, or 
along the beautiful Indian river, the waters spark- 
ling in the sunlight, a white sail here and there float- 
ing on its bosom, launches skimming across to the 
other shore. It is a charming ride with flowers and 
the music of the birds all the way. Thousands of 
tourists take it. 

When you go to Grand Canyon the train leaves a 
long stupid waste of bare ground and natural poverty, 
runs into a slight depression, and stops behind a 
clump of half grown trees You walk up a slight ele- 
vation through the trees, and there is the grandest 


THE BEAUTY SPOT OF AMERICA 


69 


spectacle in America. It is a revelation so sudden 
and so awe-inspiring that you stand spellbound. Some 
visitors burst into tears. Worldly men have said that 
they felt an impulse to pray. It is all the work of 
nature, of titanic forces, of ages of time. Man is not 
in it. It tells you to be still, and look and wonder. 

Palm Beach is also a sudden revelation. You 
cross a bridge, and a vision of marvelous beauty is 
before you. But it does not command silence. You 
could not keep still if you wanted to do so. You be- 
gin to exclaim and continue to exclaim. Over and 
over you say, “Isn’t it beautiful! Isn’t it beautiful!” 
It is not a masterpiece of nature, but man’s handi- 
work and yet a dream of a fairyland come true. The 
original man was a gardener. It is race history to 
make flower beds and plant trees. At Palm Beach 
the tradition and instinct have reached a climax. 

Once there was a waste of sand here, which scrub 
palmetto tried to shield from the open gaze of day. 
But scrub palmetto is a forlorn hope, a beggarly 
attempt to be something without push and energy 
enough to get up in the world. It is a poor wind, 
however, which does not do somebody some good, 
and one day a storm wrecked a vessel loaded with 
cocoanuts on this beach. What the natives did not 
carry away got busy and started a scattering grove of 
palms. Henry M. Flagler, a Standard Oil magnate 
who was making beauty spots along the Florida 
coast, saw the palms and selected the place for a 
supreme effort. He succeeded wonderfully. 

On one side of the little paradise is Lake Worth; 
on the other side is the Atlantic ocean. They are 
connected by two avenues of trees, one of fine palm- 
ettos, the other of Australian pines, the most graceful 
tree ever transplanted on our shores. Its long droop- 
ing branches of willowy texture sway in the wind 


70 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


like lace curtains. Nature used a fine loom when it 
made the Australian pine. It has been Mr. Flagler’s 
special delight to walk in this avenue. 

The grounds are a riot of color. There are great 
masses of croton, of gorgeous hue and prodigal 
variety of tints. And all around are the crimson of 
the hibiscus and the purple of the Bougain-villea. 
The borders of the flower beds are blue and gold, and 
the wealth of the tropics has been taxed to please 
the eye. 

“What does it make you think of,” said Miss 
Searcy to her cousin. 

“I do not think at all,” was the reply, “it has taken 
possession of me, mind and all. I am doing nothing 
but enjoy it. Has it started something in your mind?” 

“When I look at the flowers and the palms,” she 
replied, “it makes me feel that the Creator wanted to 
ask somebody the question that I asked you, that he 
wanted somebody to think about it, appreciate it, en- 
joy it. Therefore he made man, made him in his own 
image, with the love of the beautiful and all, one who 
could think about it as he did.” 

“That is, you mean that man was planned as an 
after-thought. The Creator had a world of beautiful 
flowers blooming in the meadows, water sparkling in 
the sunlight, stars glittering in the night, and no- 
body to walk in the garden nor take a look at it, or 
think a thought about it or say a word, an overwhelm- 
ing wealth of beauty and a vacuum of appreciation. 
So He made man to meet a long felt want. Is that 
it?” 

“I don’t know. But really, don’t you think that 
man is rather big to be put down as an after-thought ? 
Perhaps he was a fore-thought, and all the beautiful 
things in creation were made to give him pleasure 
when he came.” 


THE BEAUTY SPOT OF AMERICA 


71 


'‘Certainly, man was the goal or the objective or 
whatever you call it. That is the way Genesis talks, 
and that is the way nature talks to me. But when you 
look at some of these human fairies flitting around 
here, what do you think?’' 

“Oh, I think the tailor made them.” 

“But you must admit that the tailor made a pretty 
good fit.” 

“Yes, and I think that he had a fit when he did 
it; that they had a fit, and that I should like to give 
some of our sex fits for appearing as they do.” 

“Don’t, Susie, let us get our enjoyment out of it 
while we are here. And this reminds me that we had 
better be going over to the beach to see the 11 o’clock 
dip in the sea.” 

There are two functions during the day at Palm 
Beach which attract special attention, the bath in the 
sea, and the four o’clock tea under the cocoanut trees. 
The former function is peculiar, and of a divided in- 
terest. Out there is the ocean, grand and glorious, as 
it flashes in the Florida sunlight; and here are these 
bathing suits, curiously and wonderfully made. 
Spectators can take their choice and look more at 
the sea or more at the bathing suits. If the genius 
of decoration who studies colors and decoration were 
to come along he might wonder where some of these 
ideas came from, they are so unique. The four o’clock 
tea in the palm grove is wonderfully charming. 
Above are the great fronds of the palms, gently sway- 
ing across the blue of the sky, while the green cocoa- 
nuts cling to the trunks of the trees. The music of 
the orchestra is simply heavenly, and the throng of 
the people as picturesque as fashion and fancy and 
wealth and beauty can make it. Titled aristocracy 
from other lands is there, and untitled plutocracy 
from America is there; or there is a combination of 


72 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the two. You see a countess coming — everybody 
sees her — she is holding one end of a silken cord and 
a little dog is holding the other end. In Isaiah, a 
little child shall lead them, but here it is a little 
dog. Her father made millions and a French count 
fell in love with her, several millions’ worth. A 
younger woman appears; she is a duchess. An Eng- 
lish duke had a title and her father had more money 
than it was safe to die with. It was a go, another 
international love affair. And it all helps at Palm 
Beach. There are so many plutocrats in the resort 
that they become common, but dukes and counts are 
out of the usual order. They make punctuation 
marks and help to break up the monotony. 

The afternoon was passing and it was time to 
begin the homeward hurry. But I had met an old 
friend who insisted that Dinsmore and myself should 
stay another day. We decided to do so and go home 
by train the next afternoon. 

While passing out of the grounds Miss Searcy 
suddenly stopped, looked across a flower bed at a 
group of persons passing on the other side, and seemed 
somewhat agitated. She glanced at Dinsmore, but 
apparently he had seen nothing and was not con- 
cerned. The explanation comes later in the story. 

During the evening I missed Don. Fle was not 
in the lobby, nor on the gallery nor in the loggia. 
There are thirteen miles of hallway in the Royal Poin- 
ciana, and I did not know but that he might have lost 
his way in the labyrinth and that it would be neces- 
sary to organize a searching party for his rescue. But 
while I was meditating over the matter my friend 
came up with an English clergyman and we sat down 
in the loggia for a chat. Like the majority of Eng- 
lish visitors, the clergyman was over-charged with 


THE BEAUTY SPOT OF AMERICA 


73 


criticism for most things American. He would not 
admit that even Palm Beach was beautiful. Finally 
I said to him, ‘‘You have been seeing the Florida sun- 
sets for a week now, crimson, lovely ; surely they must 
strike you as being beautiful.^’ “Yes, rawther, he re- 
plied, “but don’t you think them a trifle overdone?” 
While my friend was still laughing, I replied, that 
if he had said that our plutocracy was overdone, I 
could agree with him. “We have plutocracy and you 
have aristocracy; and both are Overdone.” 

“I fawncy you are right,” he said, “but people are 
either overdone or underdone or undone. Our society 
is older than yours, and we have learned that you 
cawn’t keep human beings on a level. They shoot 
up or tumble down. I understand that your Mr. 
Flagler used to be a poor cobbler and made shoes for 
$3.00 a pair. Now he has shot up and owns the 
whole East coast of Florida, railroads, hotels and 
all.” 

“I beg your pardon,” said my friend, “but you 
have got a little bit mixed. Mr. Flagler did not make 
shoes, but left home at fourteen because he said there 
were not shoes enough in the family to go around. 
It is former Governor Douglass who made shoes at 
$3.00 a pair. He stops at the Palms, down at Miami, 
and you probably met him when there.” 

“I see, I see. Yes, I met the governor at the 
Palms. He is from Boston, is he not, and quite 
classy? I remember now that he told me that his 
profits on shoes were 16 to 1.” 

“Excuse me, sir, but I must offer another correc- 
tion. Mr. Bryan spends his winters at Miami, and 
he was the 16 to 1 man. No doubt you met him.” 

“I did, a charming man, with a broad forehead and 
a broad smile. A man of parts, I take it. Who was 
it he beat for the presidency three times?” 


74 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


was called the Boy Orator of the Platte/’ 

“I did not know that you let lads run for the presi- 
dency.” 

“Ordinarily we do not, but the Platte boy was un- 
usually large for his age.” 

“I see. But who was it that said you couldn't 
hang him on a cross of gold, not on your life — isn't 
that your slang phrase for it?” 

“It is, but for the love of Mike, don't gather up 
all our slang phrases and tattered bits of knowledge 
and make a lecture of them on America when you 
get home.” 

“I thank you most kindly for your suggestion, 
but I am not likely to do anything for the love of 
Mike, or Pat either. But let me make a suggestion 
to you American clergymen. You ought to preach 
against this awful love of the Almighty Dollar.” 

As this remark was addressed to me, I replied: 
“You are right, and the humiliating thing about it is 
that we are the only people in the world who love 
money. You English people don't care a thing for 
the Almighty Dollar. Pounds will do for you. When 
one of your bright literary lights comes here 
and chases all over the country for the Almighty Dol- 
lar, he can go to New York, exchange it for pounds 
sterling and sail away with no stigma of the dread- 
ful dollar clinging to his clothes. It is convenient. 
But, as I already have said, we admit that the money 
business is becoming serious. It is getting on our 
nerves.” 

“Getting on your nerves? What is that?” 

“It is our dumping ground. The blame, cause, or 
reason of everything queer or cranky, is charged to 
our nerves. Too much whisky is called a nervous 
breakdown. Too much temper is nervousness. A 
scared preacher in the pulpit is nervous. 


THE BEAUTY SPOT OF AMERICA 


75 


“Perhaps you will permit me to suggest that you 
take American Nerves for your lecture theme when 
you return It covers a multitude of sins; and, as I 
understand your brotherly kindness for us, you like 
to lecture us for our sins while here and lecture about 
our sins when you go home. It must be a great con^ 
venience to find that we have so many sins. 

“But here comes our lost friend. Where have you 
been, Dinsmore?*’ 

“I looked in at the ballroom until the dazzle of 
diamonds began to hurt my eyes, then I went over to 
the beach for fresh air.” 

“You seem nervous.” 

“I am,” he replied with a look of annoyance. 

The next morning aji incident occurred which 
made us all nervous, and somewhat marred the visit 
to Palm Beach. While seated in the loggia waiting 
for my friend to show us through Whitehall, a gentle- 
man approached and asked Dinsmore to step aside a 
moment for a word in private. A few minutes later 
I heard a scuffle and on looking around saw the man 
striking at Dinsmore with his cane. Dinsmore caught 
him and was about to throw him over the rail, but 
the man^s friends rushed in and pulled him away, 
and the trouble was over. 

“What was it?” I asked, with more excitement 
than Don was manifesting. 

“That man has no sense,” replied Dinsmore, “and 
there is a business matter back of it. If ever I was 
disgusted it is now. Here I am in the most beauti- 
ful place I ever have seen, and in the worst scrape I 
ever had. Tough luck that. I am going to get right 
out of here.” 

“No, you are not,” exclaimed my friend, who had 
just arrived. “We’ll go right over to Whitehall, and 
you’ll forget all about it in five minutes.” 


76 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


And to me at least his word proved true, for 
Whitehall is a wonderful creation, a carte-blanche 
of money and art. “It makes me think of the royal 
apartments at Versailles,’’ said Don. “I can see only 
one thing the matter with it. It is too grand to live 
in. I should be afraid of marring a floor if I stepped 
on it, or of slipping on the marble stairs if I tried 
to go up and down them.” 

We nearly exhausted our stock of exclamations as 
we went from one splendid room to another. Now it 
was the drawing room that seemed greatest, now the 
library, with its paintings on the walls, now the state 
dining room, and now the tapestry. Beautiful White- 
hall! It is a dream. Kings would walk softly in it. 


CHAPTER X. 

Money-Making Magic. 

T here are men of an eloquence which thrills 
the hearts of masses. There are master paint- 
ers who hang pictures on the walls of time and 
give joy to generations. There are poets who pour 
out a tide of song which pulses along all shores. 
There are sages who speak words of wisdom which 
instruct all generations. There are statesmen who 
build empires. There are seers who see visions which 
light the human way across centuries. And there are 
men who make fortunes so great, so glittering that 
they dazzle the eyes^of the business world. In their 
magic, like the magic of eloquence, there always is a 
something which cannot be explained, a secret of 
success which defies the expert critics. 

It was so with the fortune building which began 
to astonish America and the rest of the world in the 
latter part of the last century. But the brain always 
devises a method, machinery, so to speak, to accom- 
plish its purpose; and the particular cogs in the 
money-making machinery of these fortune builders 
were the holding company and the rebate. “Whose 
genius hit upon the holding company?’* I asked my 
friend. 

“It was Mr. Flagler’s device, as he told me this 
story one day. Mr. John D. Rockefeller and him- 
self were agreed that the acute competition among the 
oil men was not calculated to make them rich, that 
77 


78 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


they could make more money by working together 
than against one another. “But how can they get 
together?’' asked Mr. Rockefeller. “If we had a 
scheme for uniting them we could make millions, but 
I don't see how it could be devised." 

Mr. Flagler said that he thought he could work 
it out. The two men lived near each other and every 
morning they met at the next street corner and walked 
together to business. When they met the next morn- 
ing Mr. Flagler had no plan, nor the next morning, 
nor the next; but the next morning he said, “John, I 
think I have it." And he proposed the holding com- 
pany. Rockefeller said, “You have it, Henry, you 
have it." 

It made the Standard Oil Trust, and all the other 
trusts, and it made fortunes so vast as to stagger 
imagination It changed the face of the American 
business world. 

“Do you mean to say," I remarked, “that the 
young boy who left home because of the poverty of 
a father who was preaching on $400 a year, and who 
slept under the counter in an Ohio grocery store and 
pulled the wrapping paper around his body on cold 
nights, was carrying under his threadbare coat a 
scheme which has meant millions and billions to the 
trusts, and untold tribute from a willing or an un- 
willing people?" 

“Yes, that was about it, and he was a Presbyterian 
minister's son." 

“And predestinated to do it?" 

“Cut that out, I should not like to hold the Lord 
responsible for the American trusts. We only know 
that Flagler did it." 

“Who first thought of the rebate scheme?" 

“I don't know, but the railroads have never heard 
the last of it. It had much to do with the policy 


MONEY-MAKING MAGIC 


79 


of restriction which the railway officials now so bit- 
terly resent. But it gave the Standard Oil Company 
a long lead over its competitors.” 

‘‘I suppose that this holding company held the 
members together in such brotherly union that they 
were happy ever after.” 

“Not exactly; they did not all or always go around 
with their arms linked in brotherly love. I was here 
at the Poinciana one evening when a leading man of 
the Standard Oil Company started down these steps, 
and another member started up. The one who was 
coming down rushed toward the other with out- 
stretched hands and warm words of greeting. The 
other member of the great company ducked his head 
and shot past him without a word.” 

“What was the matter?” 

“We’ll omit that part of the story, except to say 
that it had to do with a business deal.” 

“Your reply suggests a question concerning the 
big noise which was raised a few years ago about 
Tainted Money. Is money tainted?” 

“It smells pretty good doesn’t it?” 

“Yes, and looks better than an empty contribution 
box.” 

“Look at those flower beds down there, do they 
smell tainted? ‘Consider the lilies,’ said the Master. 
‘How they grow!’ Yes, they grow in the mud. Yet 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these. Solomon would have envied such a beauty 
spot as Palm Beach. It is not what the lilies grow in 
but what they are that makes the difference. If a 
multi-millionaire’s money causes beautiful things to 
grow, why not accept them? Mr Flagler came into 
Florida with $40,000,000. He gathered up some little 
streaks of rust called railroads, shined them up, 
stretched them forward until he came to the jumping 


80 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


off place down beyond Miami; then he jumped from 
one key to another until he was at the tip end of the 
state, and then took to the water and landed in Cuba. 
It was a marvelous achievement. It took a brave soul 
and a lot of Presbyterian perseverance to do it. It 
turned this long, dreary waste of sand, scrub pal- 
metto, rattlesnake beds and alligator haunts into gar- 
den spots. It made a score of orange groves grow 
where one grew before — and oranges do not smell 
bad. It made the East coast a delight and a joy to 
the refugees from winter storms. It made occupation 
for men; it made bread for women and children. It 
made towns and cities and filled them with pretty 
homes, with churches and school houses. It created 
the beautiful until we look at it in joyful wonder. 
But the most beautiful thing about it is that it helped 
people to help hemselves. It does not seem tainted 
does it?” 

“To be honest,” I replied, “I expect this scene of 
beauty at which I am now looking to be fragrant in 
my memory as long as I live. But go on, I am much 
interested.” 

“Look at it another way,” he continued. “There 
are many things which ought to be done, but nobody 
has the money to do them. Take the hookworm, for 
example; it ought to have been hunted down long 
ago. What business had it to be making life miser- 
able with nobody to interfere? Then they put some 
Standard Oil money into the investigation and started 
the chase after the germ. It is hard on the hook- 
worm, but a good thing for the human race. This 
is only one illustration. When we take stock of 
these things some years hence, we shall find that the 
great American fortunes have done much for the 
health and happiness of mankind and that the men 
who did not want to die with all their wealth lying 


MONEY-MAKING MAGIC 


81 


like a mountain on their souls have kept multitudes of 
other people from dying before their time and will 
give safety to unnumbered generations in the future. 

“What is the use of sniffing at a plutocrat’s ten 
thousand dollars and then taking a little coin which 
has been across so many saloon counters and in and 
out of so many mean little transactions that it would 
make the face of the Indian stamped upon it blush 
if it had to give a history of its wanderings? 

“There is another thing about Mr. Flagler ; he had 
not only the money which created beauty, but a soul 
which appreciated it, and that is the real ownership 
of the beautiful. One day we were sitting on the 
loggia, and after looking at a beautiful cloud in a 
long silence he said, ‘Do you think there will be any^ 
thing more beautiful in eternity than that?’ He did 
not own the cloud, but he did own its beauty. What 
ownership of these beautiful flower beds would he 
have had if their loveliness had made no appeal to 
him? Not many of us can put much wealth in our 
pockets, but if we are made right we can put all the 
world’s wealth of beauty in our souls. I have been 
here a dozen years now and have seen many pro- 
cessions of people admiring these grounds. So that 
Mr. Flagler seems to me to have given them millions 
of dollars of happiness. 

“But to change the subject again, does Mr. Flag- 
ler let the preacher at the Poinciana chapel speak his 
mind, or does the preacher have to walk his chalk 
line? Which has his way? The man in the pulpit or 
the man who built the church and pays the bills?” 

“The man in the pulpit has his way in the pulpit. 
A worldly gentleman remarked one day that he 
thought the preacher would have to slow down in his 
criticism of the sins and slippery places of wealth or 
lose his job. Mr. Flagler brought him up standing 


82 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


with the answer that the preacher would not have to 
slow down and would not lose his job. He did not 
forget that he was a minister's son before he was a 
rich man. If ever the plutocrat arrays his money 
against a free pulpit, a free platform and a free press, 
it will be tainted indeed.*^ 

“It certainly will. But after your years of obser- 
vation of Mr. Flagler, what one particular quality in 
the man has most impressed you?” 

“His pluck He likes to do hard things, and he 
has done some of them in defiance of the advice of 
his most trusted men. Making money all men will 
agree is not easy.” 

“No, not as easy as spending it.” 

“Nor as easy as telling the rich man how he ought 
to spend it But to get back; have you ever thought 
that the great American money making effort began 
soon after the Civil War? The boys and men of that 
day saw the nation in hard lines. They looked at 
life through dreadful headlines in the daily papers, 
through blood and tears and heartbreaking sacrifices. 
It stirred their spirits, made them ready to endure 
hardness, familiarized them with great struggles and 
great achievements. And they saw what could be 
done by organization, what a few bold, aggressive men 
could do in command of masses of men. Perhaps I 
am going too far, but I am almost persuaded that the 
so-called captains of industry were the natural suc- 
cessors of the captains of war. War sifts men until 
the real generals come to the front, and so does busi- 
ness. The little men lose battles ; the strong men win 
battles, and then every thing goes their way. As long 
as there is competition, as long as man is matched 
against man and the business around one corner is 
matched against the business around another corner, 
the battle will be to the strong.” 


MONEY-MAKING MAGIC 


83 


‘‘But how are you going to get rid of competition?” 

“I don^t know. A preacher preaches against it, 
and if he outpreaches the other preacher in town he 
gets the crowd, but if not he loses out. If it were 
not possible for one man to outdo another I am afraid 
that the world would not get much done.” 

“To change the subject again, how long is the 
Poinciana kept open each year?” 

“About ten weeks.” 

“And closed nearly ten months.” 

“Yes.” 

“Then it is either a paroxysm or a paralysis here?” 

“Yes, that is about it.” 

“I don’t want either. Come, Dinsmore, we must 
be going.” 




CHAPTER XL 


Rushing a Romance. 

We parted in silence. 

We parted in tears, 

On the banks of that lovely river. 

But the odor of those by-gone years 
Shall hang over its waters forever. 

W E TOOK the afternon train from Palm Beach 
and reached the resort in the evening. Dins- 
more was moody on the way, and he said that 
he would leave for the North by the midnight train. 
I did not try to detain him, for a kind of unexplain- 
able chill had come over me after the unpleasant 
incident in the morning. I had a feeling that I did 
not understand it all. An engagement for the eve- 
ning called me away for a couple of hours, and Don 
said he would go over to the Kingsleys and make a 
parting call. It was nearly train time when he came 
into my room again, and we hurried over to the sta- 
tion. He seemed quite upset about something, and 
got matters mixed with the baggage man. I helped 
to straighten it out, but had a feeling that there was 
some baggage going with him which he was neither 
checking nor expressing to me. He waved his hand 
from the platform, and my dear Don was gone. 
Then I had a little spasm of that loneliness which we 
feel when our friends go. It is bad enough in the 
daylight, but to walk back through the darkness of 
night with it and go stumbling into an empty room 
85 


86 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


K. 


makes it much more trying. I confess to real attacks 
of the blues when it occurs. 

“Night is the time 

That brings unto the homesick mind, 

All we have loved and left behind.’* 

I was glad to receive a letter from him sooner than 
I had expected. It read: 

“My dear old chum: You may be surprised to 
hear from me so soon, but there was something which 
I did not have the courage to tell you before I left, 
and must tell you now. When I called at the Kings- 
leys, Ethel and her mother had gone to a church 
bazaar, and I asked Miss Searcy to take a walk over 
to the river with me, saying that I wanted to have a 
last good look at it. But the girl looked more beau- 
tiful than the river, and my attention got riveted on 
her, and the soft night winds were cooing, and there 
was sentiment all around. The first thing I knew 
there was a rush of romance to my head, and then 
something happened. I had not intended that it 
should happen, but it did. I proposed. 

“She was silent, too awfully silent and cool for my 
comfort After what seemed an age she said, ‘Mr. 
Dinsmore, I am surprised, and the surprise has been 
coming on for a week or more.* You know about 
how she could say that, with her long eyelashes half 
concealing a bewitching glance and her lips parting 
with a dainty little smile. ‘But I could wish that 
it had not happened. I think very highly of you, Mr. 
Dinsmore, and you have what a young woman likes 
to see in a young man when they are thinking of 
clasping hands and starting up the road together, a 
promising future. But you know I have had an un- 
fortunate experience, and it has made me cautious. 
I am very much afraid of having a hand in a romance 


RUSHING A ROMANCE 


87 


if my heart is not in it. The next time I become 
I want to stay engaged, and when I marry 
I want to stay married. It is all right to say ‘‘for 
better, or for worse,’' but I want to be dead sure 
that it will be for the better. I am not saying that 
I distrust you, but I distrust myself. To be entirely 
candid in so serious a matter, I do not think that I 
am in love with you. If a flower which you handed 
me seemed more than a whole garden full of other 
flowers, I should think that it was the thrill of the 
hand which gave it. But it is not that way. The 
signs are lacking.’ 

“By this time I was beginning to feel home-sick, 
and wishing that I had listened to the governor when 
he told me to keep off the banks of the Indian 
river. In the words of the song, I could have cried, 
‘Turn back the universe and give me yesterday.’ But 
the universe does not back up nor back down for the 
accommodation of mistaken mortals. I had miscalcu- 
lated. Perhaps if I had given her more time from 
her other experiment it would have been different. 

“I was beginning to think what I should say and 
do next, but when I looked at her again she was cry- 
ing, and then I wanted to weep a little myself. ‘You 
do not know, Mr. Dinsmore,’ she said with a sob, 
‘how painful it is to me to say what I have said to 
you, for I owe my life to you. I never can forget 
how you imperiled your life to save mine. You are 
a hero, and that always shall be my thought of you.’ 

“So I am to be hero instead of husband, and the 
beautiful young woman goes on her way. We parted 
at the river, for she said that she wanted to dry her 
tears and get her face straight before meeting that 
happy, heart-free girl at home. 

“Now a little item personal to yourself. Don’t 
stir up Miss Kingsley too much with your advanced 


88 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


views on theology. I have just met a young man 
who knows the Kingsleys, whose sister was a class- 
mate of Ethel's, and he said that she was considered 
one of the brightest girls ever in the college, a cham- 
pion debater in the literary society, and quite fond 
of a tussle with the professor of philosophy in her 
senior year. The young man grew quite enthusiastic 
about her; and you know that people as really re- 
ligious as she is will do heroic things in defense of 
their faith. Those soft brown eyes look fawn-like, 
but I should not want to start up the intellectual fire 
back of them. I was surprised one day when calling 
there to see how many books on ‘new theology' and 
up-to-date subjects were scattered around the room. 
If you get her started you might find that you had 
set off a whole arsenal of fireworks. 

‘T also remember a little incident which occurred 
on the steamship one day. The captain had honored 
us with seats at his table, and he was quite deferential 
to the two young ladies. But he criticised America 
so much that it became unpleasant. He laughed more 
heartily at his thrusts than the rest of us. But one 
day Miss Kingsley quietly and gently led him back 
to the Revolution, and when he had reached a high 
pitch, she began a comparison of the Georges, our 
one George and the English-German Georges. She 
seemed to have Thackeray's ‘Four Georges' at her 
tongue's end — Miss Searcy told me afterwards that 
she had spent the morning reading up on it — and by 
the time she was through with the captain the table 
was in a roar of laughter. After that he confined him- 
self to sea yarns at the table, and America had peace. 

“So I say, look where you step. Old Top. 

“Goodbye, good luck, God bless you." 

“Don.” 


RUSHING A ROMANCE 


89 


“P. S. I forgot to say that the name of the young 
man was Rosslyn. If ever he should cross our path 
again you will remember the name/* 

I made it convenient to call at the Kingsleys the 
next evening after I received the letter, and in the 
course of the conversation I turned Miss Ethel’s 
thoughts back to her college days, and asked her if 
she had a class-mate named Rosslyn. ‘‘Yes,” she re- 
plied, “and what a delightful girl she was.” 

“Dinsmore writes me,” I added, “that he met her 
brother on the way up the road.” 

Miss Kingsley started slightly, but before she 
could reply her cousin came to the rescue with the 
remark that she had a little piece of news for me. 
“The young wife who had the interview with you the 
other day,” she said, “and wanted to get back to her 
husband and old pastor, dropped me a note today 
from Palm Beach.” 

“From Palm Beach,” I exclaimed, “how was that?” 

“It was because I wrote her asking for an explana- 
tion. She replied that on reaching Jacksonville she 
found a telegram from her husband telling her to 
wait there until his arrival, that he was at Atlanta on 
his way to Florida and would join her, and they would 
go on their way together to Palm Beach.” 

“And you mean to say that they were at Palm 
Beach when we were?” 

“Yes, I saw her just as we were leaving.” 

“Did you know her husband?” 

“No; if I had known and seen him, I might have 
felt differently about the matter.” * 

“What do you know about her affairs?” 

I know that they are complicated, but you cannot 
unravel that kind of a Ungle as you can a stocking, 
by getting hold of a thread and pulling at it. Let 


90 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


us change the subject and talk about the new woman's 
lecture which we heard this afternoon.” 

“How was it?” 

“Clever, very clever. Really I felt sorry for the 
men who were there. Being a prudent man, you fore- 
saw the evil and hid yourself. But I think the 
lecturer's nervous system got the better of her and 
she went too far. I am enough of a new woman to 
want the franchise, but I also am frank enough to 
say that when the ballot box needs defending it would 
be handy to have a man around. And I think, too, 
that as the years lengthen their shadows and the 
brown hair begins to be sprinkled with gray, that I 
should rather have a man say to his neighbor, ‘My 
old woman,' than to have the neighbors say of the 
maiden lady over the way, ‘The new woman.’ ” 

“Oh, you funny girl,” exlaimed Miss Kingsley, “but 
I pray that you may have good success and get the 
best man in the world.” 

“You don't mean that you pray,” replied her 
cousin, “but that you meditate. It is one of the new 
discoveries that prayer is meditation.” 

“But don't you say every night, ‘Let us say our 
prayers, Ethel."' 

“I do, because my mother taught me that when I 
was little ; and the little Susie still prays, but the big 
Susie meditates.” 

“You darling, hereafter when I kiss you for the 
night I'll make it double, a kiss for the little Susie, 
and a kiss for the big Susie.” 

I was beginning to think this very interesting, 
Vhen Miss Ethel changed the subject by saying, “We 
are going to Ormond tomorrow, and we all want you 
to go along.” 

“What are you going to Ormond for?” I asked. 

“Papa wants to see John D. Rockefeller playing 


RUSHING A ROMANCE 


91 


golf, and the rest of us are going for the ride. The 
beach up that way is called the finest in the country.” 

“I much regret that I cannot go with you, but I am 
to preach a special discourse next Sunday, and ser- 
mons do not make themselves.” 

“I have heard sermons from the natives down 
here,” said Susie laughingly, ^‘which did not have a 
maker; they just spilled out. And I have heard ser- 
mons from the experts up North which did not have 
a Maker anywhere, beginning or end, it was all na- 
ture-religion.” 

‘T stopped at Ormond on my way down,” I said, 
‘'and chanced to see Mr. Rockefeller at golf.” 

“How did he play?” 

“He struck the ball and watched to see it light.” 

“There was nothing very remarkable about that.” 

“No, but a man mounting up to a fortune of about 
a billion dollars is rather remarkable. The rest of 
us are excusable for staring at him, whether he makes 
a golf hit or another hundred million.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

A Day With the Mossbacks. 

I T SEEMED to me that I never before had seen 
so beautiful a Sunday morning. The sun was 
mounting into a cloudless sky, the dewdrops were 
on the grass, the birds were pouring a flood of song 
from a thousand throats, a soft wind was in the trees ; 
and the gleaming silver of the long streamers of moss 
which swayed across the path, the green and the gold of 
the orange groves, the flowers in the yard, and the 
ripple and the laughter of the waters in the river, 
made the world radiantly beautiful. I felt all the 
gladness of it, all the inspiration of it when I went 
into the pulpit. My theme was “The Beauty of Holi- 
ness,” and I told the people that the beautiful world 
upon which they looked that morning had already 
preached them a sermon on the subject, that God 
loved the beautiful, that he wanted nothing to seem 
ugly or dark and gloomy, that he wanted no for- 
bidding, frowning doctrine, no depressing beliefs, that 
He made the world to give them joy, not to frighten 
them, not to fill their minds with misgivings, nor 
their hearts with trembling. God wants us to put 
away all the false alarms with which superstition has 
filled religious life. 

Medieval theology is dead and ought to be buried. 
We live in a new age, an age of knowledge, of 
progress, an age in which we educate the people into 
religion, not scare them into it. No tree in the for^ 
93 


94 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


est, nor plant in the garden looks beautiful when its 
leaf begins to wither. Knowledge is the tree of life. 
I repeat, we live in an age of . knowledge. When 
Martin Luther was born, America was hidden behind 
the dim distance and mist of an untraveled ocean. 
Columbus added another side to the world, and Dar- 
win added another side to human knowledge. He 
changed the universe from a miracle to a growth. 
The human mind has marched to discoveries and con- 
quests which were beyond dreams when the reform- 
ers broke down the barriers to freedom. All life 
throbs with a new and boundless energy. Then 
knowledge was a thimble-full ; now it is an ocean. 
Then the school was for the few, now for all. Then 
the printed page crawled slowly from the press, and 
feeble and few crept along a broken road or dim path ; 
now it floods the world with the morning light. We 
have put wings on everything, and the thrill of the 
swift and the instantaneous is everywhere. 

Is such a world to be preached to as Luther 
preached to men and women who were just beginning 
to rub the darkness of the Middle Ages out of their 
eyes? I do not think so. Grant, as I cheerfully do, 
all the great things done by the Reformation, yet let 
us face the fact squarely that it has served its period, 
and that to bow to it any longer would be to fasten 
upon ourselves the tyranny of dead hands. Moses led 
Israel to the Jordan, but could not go over into the 
promised land. The Reformation led Protestantism 
out of the wilderness of indulgences, papal oppression 
and priestly interference with the right of the soul to 
talk to God, but now it has come to a swollen Jordan, 
to a flood of knowledge, which is out of the old banks, 
and it cannot carry us over to an age of glowing 
promise. 


A DAY WITH THE MOSSBACKS 


95 


There are people who do not know that a new 
age has arrived. They still think that the law was 
written by Moses, ,but scholars declare that the story 
of Moses must be laid on the shelf. They tell us 
that the law was written by priests when Israel's 
exiles hanged their harps upon the willows by the 
rivers of Babylon, that they borrowed the code of the 
natives and then put wonders and signs behind it to 
make it impressive. The scholars tell us Abraham 
was only a tribal name, that there was no real, actual 
Jacob to run away from home, and that Joseph never 
was in Egypt, that he was an imaginary boy, a He- 
brew tradition. They also tell us that Daniel was 
not in a lion's den, that there were two or three 
Isaiahs, or as many as scholarship thinks necessary. 
The Psalms were not written by David, but by un- 
known poets. All these things, I say, are now given 
us as the conclusions of a reverent scholarship. In a 
word, criticism is giving us a new Bible, free from 
myths and miracles. Psychology and the expert are 
becoming authority alike for preacher and people. 

Along with this, the modern interpretation is teach- 
ing us that Jesus of Nazareth was not a God come 
down out of heaven, but a man reaching up to heaven 
to show us what man will be when evolution has 
finished its course. ‘Trophets, priests, poets, philoso- 
phers, He towers above them all.” “And whatever 
the surprises of the future. He will never be sur- 
passed.” His death on the Cross was a pattern of 
self-sacrifice, not an atonement. He was chief among 
martyrs. Forgiveness is an eternal part of divinity 
and does not require a ransom. 

I admit that some of these things sound more 
radical than I like, that they throw beliefs cherished 
by our fathers into the back alley. But religion which 
makes us believe because our fathers believed, is a 


96 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


tyranny. A religion which keeps us tied to our moth- 
er’s apron strings is slavery. Progress means that a 
generation knows more than their fathers and moth- 
ers, think higher and deeper than their fathers and 
mothers, are better than the men of the past; that 
they drink less, do not fight duels, nor do a whole 
lot of other things which used to be good form in 
first-class society. 

The modern man believes in salvation by charac- 
ter. He is not waiting to go to heaven when he dies, 
but believes in making a heaven here and now. ‘T 
saw a new heaven and a new earth,” said the seer of 
Revelation. That is what we see, not up there in the 
vast distance of the blue and the eternal, but here 
where men and women toil and struggle and weep 
and hope and clasp their children to their bosoms. 
O friends, be free, be strong, be good. Look upon 
all that is best and go forward. Look upon all that 
is beautiful and rejoice. 

The church was crowded to overflowing, and the 
sermon made a sensation. The old man who sat 
down in front said that the parson was ‘‘a purty 
preacher and powerful interestin, but that sermon did 
not set well on his system.” A hard-shell Baptist 
family, who had flounced out of the church in the 
middle of the discourse, remarked that if that was the 
new-fangled, patent process religion, they hoped it 
would keep scarce on the banks of the Indian river. 

Mr. Kingsley, so I was told, observed that the 
preacher was young yet, and some young preachers 
had to go through an attack of the measles before they 
got their bearing. Miss Searcy said that it was up- 
to-date preaching, and would go further ten years 
from now; that the new preacher had not thought it 
safe to get too far in front of the firing line. Miss 
Kingsley did not say anything just then, but if she 


A DAY WITH THE MOSSBACKS 


97 


did not have something in her eye when she went out 
of church it was because I could not make a good 
guess. Bob Bamby waited until I was near the hotel 
and then said, “Parson, I shouldn’t wonder if you 
started something in this town today. Some of the 
people down here don’t work very hard at their re- 
ligion, but they are ready to fuss about it any old 
time. They are powerful fond of Daniel in the lion’s 
den. They like to see him in there just ready to be 
all chawed up, and then have the lions put their tails 
between their hind legs and slink away. It will be a 
mighty big privation to the native parsons if they 
can’t preach about Daniel any more. But say. Par- 
son, you were sly about Jonah and the whale. I 
guess you knowed better than to attack a big fish 
story on the east coast of Florida. Lord, man, they 
would believe that Jonah caught a whale with a fish 
worm.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A Banker's Daughter in the Pulpit. 

I WAS not long in learning what Miss Kingsley had in 
mind. The little daily paper announced in its 
Monday evening issue that Miss Ethel Kingsley 
would speak on religious subjects at the church the next 
Sunday afternoon; and the editor added that it was 
suspected that the banker's daughter would make some 
reply to the sensational sermon of the previous Sunday. 

I heard that her father objected at first, that her 
mother said, “Oh Ethel!” but her cousin Susie said, 
“Sick him, Tige ! -Go for him !” 

When she persisted in her determination her father 
said : “I want you to understand, Ethel, that if you get 
into this thing I shall see you through but it is going to 
cost me $50 to hire the Chautauqua Hall, for you will 
never get your congregation into that church. These 
people down here will go miles to hear a theological 
scrap.” 

“You are a good papa,” she replied, and I’ll promise 
you not to ask for a new spring hat.” 

“But if you shy your old hat into the ring, how are 
you going to get along without a new one ?” 

“Perhaps if it gets tramped on it will be in just the 
right shape for the pew spring fashion.” 

The news flew fast. The West Palm Beach paper 
headed it up: 

A BANKER’S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 
SHE IS GOING TO^TRIM THE PARSON 
99 


100 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


A Miami paper had for its title : 

A YANKEE GIRL THROWS DOWN THE GAUNT- 
LET TO A YOUNG NEW YORK PREACHER 

A Fort Lauderdale sheet flamed out with this : 

The Prettiest Girl on the Coast Is Going to Cross 

Swords With the Most Eloquent Preacher That 
Ever Came Down the Pike, 

The Daytona and Orlando papers also put it in sen- 
sational headlines. And the Jacksonville papers gave it 
a flaring send-off. It was ‘^good stuff.” 

The meeting was announced for three o’clock but at 
noon the people were beginning to arrive and by one 
o’clock the sidewalks around the church were filling up. 
Mr. Kingsley went over and hired the hall. He shook his 
head, but looked elated when he saw the coming crowds. 

And how they did come! Autos lined the streets. 
They came over from Orlando and Sanford, and down 
from Daytona and New Smyrna. Two cracker preach- 
ers came forty miles on horseback, and women walked 
tiresome distances with babies in their arms. They ^‘al- 
lowed that the purty girl would make it mighty inter- 
estin’ for the Yankee preacher.” The town could have 
burnt down that afternoon without driving anybody out 
of a house. They all were at the meeting. 

The great hall was crowded, and men looked in at 
the windows. Two or three reporters were at a table, and 
there was an air of expectation throughout the house. It 
was a pretty trying moment for a speaker who had not 
been experimenting on large audiences. But when Miss 
Kingsley arose to speak she seemed to have herself well 
in hand, though her deferential attitude toward her hear- 
ers was almost pathetic. Her voice was clear and its 
peculiar music gave to her tones the very witchery of 
eloquence. The great congregation was soon under its 
spell. 


A BANKER^S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 101 


“They stoned Paul/* she began, “ when he was preach- 
ing in cities and towns of the old Roman Empire and 
they are stoning him yet, now that he is preaching in all 
lands and in all languages. I am not here this afternoon 
to defend him — he needs no defense. The greatest of 
human intellects, the profoundest students of religion have 
bowed to the imperial power of his mind. I am here to 
lend a helping hand in the work which commanded his 
loyalty and love. It is only the weak hand of a woman 
but if it no more than touches the fringe of the border, 
I gladly give it. You remember how beautifully he 
spoke to the Philippians of the women who had labored 
with him in the gospel and whose names were in the 
Book of Life. Life is short, but the reward is long. 
If you and I can help one another this afternoon to get 
our names on the page white and fair it will be a blessed 
consummation. 

“Nor am I here to defend the Bible. It defends us, 
saves us from the evil within and the enemy without. 
Martin Luther said to the dreadful array of power and 
hate which confronted him at the Diet of Worms, Tf 
you can show me by the Scriptures that I am wrong, I 
will submit.* They could not do it, and he went forth 
to change the face of the world. Precious old Book! 
It will be here until the stars fade from the sky. (Amen, 
shouted the two cracker preachers.) But while the Bible 
cannot be destroyed, precious souls can be destroyed. 
‘Offend not one of these little ones who believe in Me,* 
said the Master. Oh, the evil they do when they offend 
one of the little ones in the Christian life, weak in the 
faith ! 

“Now in order that I may help you to follow me and 
that I may follow myself, I shall do as the ministers do, 
take a text. It is in the parable of the Prodigal Son: 

“He began to be in want.’* 


102 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“We are in a world of wants. To live at all is to 
want. To begin to be is to begin to want. The first 
cry of the infant is for food; the last longing look of 
the dying man is for life. And from the cradle to the 
grave there is an incessant, daily, hourly round of wants. 
Some wants are more pressing than others. Some 
are more special than others. The sick man says, 
‘The fresh air of the morning is so full of health, but 
I have no health.’ The blind man says, ‘The world 
is so full of life and beauty, but I am in darkness all 
the time. ,1 cannot even see the face of my mother.’ 
The deaf man says, ‘There is music everywhere, and 
I cannot hear the song of bird or the voice of love.’ 
The child of poverty says, ‘It is such a big world, and I 
have so little.’ And we all are saying, ‘The march of 
the ages is so great and grand, and I have such a little 
part in it; time is so long, and life is such a little while; 
I never shall pass this way again, and I am missing so 
much.’ 

“This multitudinous cry of want kept going up to 
heaven and pressing against the great heart of God until 
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. When 
Jesus came they pressed upon Him on every side with 
their cry of want. The blind cried to Him by the way. 
The lame man called to Him. Lepers standing in the 
separation of a lonely agony cried to Him. Fathers 
came to Him with their sons, mothers with their 
daughters, wayward women with their tears of penitence. 
In a word, the whole world of misery and of grief 
pressed upon Him. The great Napoleon said in the 
height of his career that there were men and women in 
the cellars of Paris who had never heard his name. But 
when Jesus Christ came to a town everybody knew He 


A BANKER'S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 103 


was there, and they came running to Him with their 
troubles and their wants. 

“But now they tell us that He was only a man. I 
cannot believe it. I cannot believe that God raised up 
only a man to meet this world of want, to answer all 
this great cry of our humanity. No man, it matters not 
how big they make him, could measure up to all the mag- 
nitude and multiplicity of our world’s wants. He must 
be God to be Master of so vast an undertaking. (Amen.) 

“He went about doing wonders, great works they 
are called, healing the sick, opening the eyes of the 
blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf. Nothing 
baffled Him, except unbelief. But now they are try- 
ing to explain away all the miracles. They tell us 
that the miracles mar the picture of the Christ. But 
do they? I see before me men and women whom I 
have met in the great art galleries of the Old World 
admiring the paintings of the famous masters. Now 
suppose that some man came and with a sharp little 
knife cut out a strip from one of the great master- 
pieces, cut it from top to bottom, would the passing 
throng admire it any more? Would it be a master- 
piece, or would it be a wreck, a fragment? 

“And so with the gospel picture of Jesus Christ, 
will it be a picture of Him if we cut out the story 
of the miracles, the wonderful works? He built no 
hospitals. He founded no colleges. He established 
no state. He carried no baskets of food to the poor. 
He did not watch at the bedside of the sick through 
the long watches of the night. Pray, what wonderful 
works did He do if not the works which Matthew, 
Mark, Luke and John tell us he did? Be careful now, 
how you use that little sharp knife of criticism on the 
gospel picture, (Amen), or we will not have a Christ. 
(Amen.) 


104 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“Even if we could spare the miracles from the pic- 
ture, we cannot spare the power which the miracles 
signify. They were a sign and demonstration that 
there was in that mighty hand of His a power equal 
to all the world’s wants, and that there was in that 
great heart of His a love responsive to all the world’s 
sore cry. Let the miracles stand, let them stand. 
(Amen.) I know when I see Him stilling the waves 
of the sea that He can still the storms in my heart 
and your heart. I know when I see Him feeding the 
multitude with the few loaves and fishes, that he had 
power to feed an army and overrun the world with 
conquest, and build an empire by force, but would 
not do it because He was here to build a kingdom 
of love. With our weak eyes and feeble sight we can- 
not see very far into the spiritual mysteries and 
eternal meanings, but the miracles help us to see God’s 
power and goodness. They lend words and wings to 
our songs of faith and hope. Let them stay in the 
picture. (Amen.) Children can understand them if 
expert scholars cannot. Agonizing mothers can 
mount up on them to the Hand that helps. (Amen.) 

“Again, I want you to go with me to the foot of 
the Cross on that dreadful day and look upon that 
scene with its contagion of derision, its taunts and 
jeers. ‘He saved others. Himself He cannot save.’ 
Was that insolent taunt true? Did Jesus Christ die 
that day because He could not save Himself? Be- 
cause the combined power of Jewish priests and the 
Roman governor had laid hold of Him and dragged 
Him to the cross and he could not break their deadly 
grasp? I look at the miracles and they tell me that 
it was not so, that He had power irresistible. Why 
then did He die? Why did He let them drive the 
cruel nails and spikes through His hands 'and feet? 
Because He could not help Himself and save us. He 


A BANKER'S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 105 


was dying for us, not a victim of common weakness, 
but the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of 
the world. (Amen and Amen.) 

‘There is a fountain filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, 

And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
Lose all their guilty stains.* 

“The children of faith will sing that song until 
they all go home to heaven, and then will sing it 
on the crystal sea. (Amen and Amen.) 

“Now turn to the prodigal and his want. When 
he began to be in want he came to himself. He had 
been away from himself. He had not been himself; 
he had been somebody else. You may have noticed 
in your own life that we never think we are ourselves 
except when we are at our best. If you are not feel- 
ing well you say, T am not quite myself today.* 
When a man commits a crime he runs away and 
changes his name, he becomes somebody else, he is 
not at his best. The prodigal was not feeling well in 
that far country. He was not at his best, but at his 
worst. When he came to himself, it was a start back 
from the worst to the best again ; from his rags to the 
best robe in the house, from gnawing hunger to a 
feast, from grimy hands to a ring of adoption on his 
finger, from a herd of swine to a great company of 
rejoicing people, with a glorious welcome in their out- 
stretched hands. (Amen.) He was at his best again, 
and that meant that he was himself. God wants to 
put as at our best, because nothing less than that is 
our real self. Jesus Christ wants to present us to 
God without spot or wrinkle or blemish, or any such 
thing, in the white robe washed in His blood. It 
will be glorious to be at our best, and ourselves. 
(Amen.) 


106 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


** Wasn’t that boy glad to get back to his father’s 
house again? Once he had thought his father an old 
fogy> and did not want to be tied to his mother’s 
apron strings. He did not want to go to church, but 
to get away where ‘a fellow would have some lib- 
erty/ His liberty was a dangerous thing, even if it 
does sound like a heresy to say it in this free land 
of ours, where the eagle screams over the cradle of 
every child as soon as it is born. But the servants 
of the house could not get away ; and after the prodi- 
gal had tried the liberty of all outdoors and all the 
open doors of sin, he sat down and cried, because the 
servants in his father’s house had bread and to spare 
and he was perishing with hunger. 

I tell you, my friends, liberty is a dangerous thing, 
unless we know what to do with it. A free country 
needs an immense amount of the gospel. (Amen.) 
It needs God’s signboard at every corner. Freeborn 
children need second-born parents, born of the Spirit. 
You cannot be free and be safe without religion. If 
my father were not present this afternoon I could tell 
you a story of the many young men he has saved 
from perishing with hunger because they did not 
know what to do with their liberty in a big city. 

^'Certainly the children of our country are not 
suffering from a lack of liberty, and who does not 
want them to have all the freedom of joyous young 
life that can be harmonized with their future welfare. 
But when disaster comes they will not thank their 
parents for giving them a liberty which proved their 
ruin. 

*‘We want truth, we must want it if we are follow- 
ers of our Lord, for it was one of the greatest wants 
that He came to this world to meet: *1 am the way, 
and the truth, and the life.’ We want the truth as 
much as those who are urging what they call new 


A BANKERS S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 107 


truth. They intimate that we are afraid of truth. We 
are not afraid of truth. But we are afraid to throw 
away truth just because it is old, and we do hesitate 
to accept everything as truth just because it is new. 
There is in the animal world what is termed The call 
of the wild.’ A tamed animal suddenly reverts to the 
traits of the wild ancestor; a dog turns back to the 
wolf, or the hyena. There may be, I fear there is, 
something like it in religion or theology. A tamed 
theologian suddenly hears the call of the wild, and 
goes back to trends and traits of a pagan ancestor. 
He thinks that his theology has become tame, and 
that now he is going forward, when in fact he is 
going backward. From the bottom of my heart I pity 
any school of men who think that they are advancing 
when they are slipping backward, when they look 
upon an idea as new which is a heresy so old and so 
done for by human logic that it has been forgotten. 
Any man ought to know the difference between a 
crawfish backing away into a hole in the ground and 
a lark shaking the dew of the meadow from its breast 
and mounting upward with a song of the morning leap- 
ing from its little throat. 

‘‘Must we deny all the past to keep up with the 
present? Must we sit around in the morning wait- 
ing until the cable brings us the latest conclusions of 
German scholarship before we resume our daily jour- 
ney in the religious life? Does nobody know what 
to believe except the experts, and do they always 
know what they believed the day before, or will be- 
lieve tomorrow? It is better to be tied to the apron- 
strings of a believing, praying mother, than to be 
tied to a theological kite and hung up between heaven 
and earth with nothing to stand on below and noth- 
ing in sight above. (Amen.) 


108 


"A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


minister may preach eloquently on this great 
parable, and yet be just as much of a prodigal as the 
young man who went into a far country and got into 
want. The prodigal son ran away from his father^s 
and mother’s home. The prodigal preacher runs 
away from his father’s and mother’s religion. A 
sheep can stray from the fold, and so can a young 
man with a sheepskin stray from the faith. (Sensa- 
tion in the audience.) The prodigal son got into a 
far country; so does the prodigal preacher, such a far 
country that the rest of us mortals cannot follow him. 
And then they tell us that it is because we can’t think 
or don’t think. I tell you that it is always a far 
country when it is away from God. The prodigal 
found himself away from the base of supplies, and we 
all are away from the base of supplies when we are 
away from God. He sent his Son into the world that 
God might be near to us and we near to Him. But 
when they make only a man of Jesus Christ, they put 
us Into a far country again. ‘He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father,’ said the Master. That is what 
the human heart craves, God near enough to see and 
hear and feel and know. Tmmanuel, God with us/ 
Glory be to his name. (Amen and Amen.) 

“When the prodigal came to himself he began to 
think of what they had to eat in his father’s house. 
It is strange how a boy will fuss and complain about 
the table which is set before him in the dear old 
home, and then when he is married he never tires 
telling his wife what a good cook his mother was. 
(A ripple of laughter over the audience.) There are 
young preachers who do the same thing, figuratively 
speaking. They fuss about the home cooking and 
want something else to eat ; and then when they have 
chewed the husks of Liberalism and Rationalism 
awhile they begin to understand what a good cook 


A B ANKERS S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 109 


that dear, pious mother was. (Amen.) I thank God 
for a praying mother. (Amen.) 

“When the prodigal had come to himself and to a 
second sober thought about it, he said : 

*‘The old-time breakfast is good enough for me. 

The old-time dinner is good enough for me. 

The old-time supper is good enough for me.” 

As the fair orator said this she stepped to the 
front, and with a triumphant look in her face and 
ringing tones exclaimed: 

“The old time religion is good enough for me.” 

The effect was electrical. A wave of applause 
swept over the great audience, and every preacher in 
the house shouted, “Amen.” 

After stilling the tumult with a little motion of 
her hand she went on: “Woman’s heart was hungry 
when Jesus Christ came into the world, and He fed 
it. Brute force had conquered the world. The 
Caesars had sent forth their legions, and they brought 
back victory and long lines of helpless captives. 
From her Seven Hills Rome ruled the world. Jesus 
Christ was a new kind of being. He exalted the at- 
tributes which belonged to woman’s heart. Pilate’s 
wife said, T had a dream about Him.’ It was not 
her dream alone, but woman’s dream of the ages, the 
dream that some day there would come a mighty One 
who would not rule by force, but by love. When 
this One came she recognized Him. She always will 
recognize Him, for He satisfies the greatest want of 
her heart. Think what a far country woman was in 
before Christ came. Think what a far country she 
will be in if they take away her Christ. Then indeed 
will she begin to be in want. Men may make less of 
Christ, for they can prevail by brute force ; but woman 
never can make less of Him, for heart power is her 


110 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


stronghold in the world. It was because He was 
more than a man that His coming has made the world 
so much better than man made it. The more He gets 
into the heart of the world the more truly does woman 
come into what is reasonably and properly her own. 

“Think of the long, long ages, dreary and dreadful, 
when man lost so much which woman could have 
helped him to do, when the world lost the high value 
of her best attributes. 

“And this brings me to the Father’s exclamation 
when the prodigal came home, ‘He was lost and is 
found.’ Who can measure what was lost to this 
world because it did not find the worth of woman’s 
heart and the infinite value of man’s soul? When 
Jesus Christ came He began to look for that which 
was lost, and He found it. 

“I know that it is not thought good form in some 
pulpits to speak of a lost world; men talk about 
science, but not about saving lost souls. But what 
has science been doing, what is it doing, but trying 
to recover a lost world, lost forces, lost power to min- 
ister to man’s incessant wants? Five thousand years 
ago a bird sat on a limb over a mountain stream and 
sang a beautiful song. The song was lost because 
there was no human ear in the wilderness to hear 
it; and the power of the rushing waters below was 
lost because there was no hand or brain of man to 
harness it to the wheels of industry. For long and 
toilsome ages man did not find that power. Now 
science has found it; and is lighting the world with 
it, helping the hand of toil with it. The prodigal 
power has come home. It was in a far country. It 
was lost but is found. 

“What science is doing in the material world Jesus 
Christ is doing in the moral world, redeeming its lost 
forces, its moral forces, its spiritual power. We will 


A BANKER^S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 111 


have heaven here below when all the moral forces of 
the human kind have been redeemed and turned into 
one great rolling, resistless tide toward the shores of 
the eternal world. 

*‘Yes, Jesus is calling prodigals home. He is find- 
ing lost ones. A man said, “I believe the Bible be- 
cause it finds me.” We believe in Christ because He 
finds us. And what is so great is that He takes us as 
He finds us. (Amen.) 

‘I am a sinner saved by grace. 

This is my story, 

To God be the glory, 

I am a sinner saved by grace/ 

“But they tell us that the father’s forgiveness of 
his wayward and wandering prodigal shows that 
God is forgiving, and that there is nothing needed for 
forgiveness but for us to go back and get it ; that there 
is no need of an atonement and an offering for sin on 
the cross. 

“But Jesus Christ is not telling the whole story of 
human redemption in this parable. You might as well 
say that there is no need of preachers or missionaries 
because no preacher was sent into the far off country 
to bring back the prodigal. The Pharisees and 
scribes murmured because He ate with publicans and 
sinners, and Jesus told this parable to show that God 
wants to save His lost children. The woman wanted 
to find the lost piece of money because it was hers. 
The shepherd wanted to find the lost sheep because 
it was his. God wants to find lost men and women 
because they are His. The joy which it gives Him 
when He finds them is the climax of the story. How 
He saves them is not the story. The Cross tells that 
story : 


112 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


*In the cross of Christ I glory, 

Towering o'er the wrecks of time. 

All the light of sacred story 
Gathers round its head sublime.* 

“That is where all the light of the story shines. 
That is where it becomes sublime beyond all human 
expression or measure of sacrifice or love. 

“ ‘Tell me the old, old story.’ 

“The prodigal got home. Oh, brothers, sisters, I 
know that down in your hearts you all want to get 
home. Don’t run into that far country where want 
will close down upon you forever. The prodigal had 
to go as far back as he had strayed from home. Re- 
member, remember, that you will have to go as far 
back as you run away or miss the eternal home. 

“Get the prodigal’s penitence in your hearts and 
his prayer on your lips, or you will never make even 
a start to the heavenly home. ‘Father, I have sinned.’ 
When a sinner says that, says it from a hungry heart, 
from a penitent heart, they get ready to ring the 
bells of heaven. Then they begin to prepare for a 
great reception, to look up the best there is in the 
house. It is wonderful, wonderful how God thinks 
nothing too good for returning sinners. He gave the 
best he had in heaven to save them. He gives them 
the best He has in heaven when they are saved. It 
is wonderful, wonderful. The poet prophet of Israel 
said, ‘His name shall be called Wonderful.’ Here we 
are creatures of want, want; there we shall want for 
nothing. Here we grieve every day that we fall so 
far below our ideals, there we shall be at our best, 
not for a sweet, beautiful little moment, but forever. 
(Amen.) 

“Up out of the weariness, out of the long struggle, 
out of the prayers, out of the tears and the years, I 
see them coming, coming to the home gathering. 


A BANKER^S DAUGHTER IN THE PULPIT 113 


Sinners who had much forgiven, veterans who had 
many scars, men who had overcome the world, women 
who had believed in darkest night, devoted souls who 
had not counted their lives dear to them, martyrs 
whose bodies had been scorched by fire, broken on the 
wheel, missionaries who went to the ends of the earth 
to tell the story of Christ’s love, to seek for the lost 
brother, I see them coming, coming, a great multi- 
tude whom no man could number.” 

Here the address became so eloquent and appeal- 
ing that it could not be described, and the reporters 
dropped their pencils and listened spellbound to the 
end. Her closing words were taken from the beauti- 
tiful hymn: 

“I know not why God’s wond’rous love 
To me He hath made known, 

Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love 
Redeemed me for his own. 

But I know in whom I have believed, 

And am persuaded that He is able 

To keep that which I’ve committed unto Him 

Against that day.” 

When she sat down tears were glistening on her 
cheeks, and the effect of it all was very great. Women 
were sobbing, men were wiping their eyes ; her father 
was like a man transfigured ; her mother was weeping, 
and her cousin was beaming upon her with devouring 
admiration and love. Tears were rolling down Ham- 
by’s tanned face and Lucy was praying. The cracker 
preachers could not have looked happier if they had 
been up to heaven and just got back. The other 
preachers were shaking hands with each other and 
rejoicing. The Baptist minister of the place told me 
a year later that he knew of three score persons who 
were converted that afternoon and joined the differ- 
ent churches. 


114 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


I came away feeling that it was worth all her col- 
lege training and all her years of mental discipline to 
have such mastery in that one hour. And far more 
did I think of the Christian faith which made the 
mastery so well worth while. 

Her mother was doing more than she knew when 
she baptized her child into her faith with her tears. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

A Pullman Porter's Philosophy. 

F ortunately for my convenience and com- 
fort of mind I received a night letter from my 
mother on Tuesday morning telling me that I 
must return at once, that the congregation was fall- 
ing off, that the church was becoming restless, and 
that she was not feeling well herself. 

‘‘Don’t try to bring all those people around to 
your views." she added, “they would only backslide 
if you did, for that is part of their religion. Two or 
three weeks of revival and then six months of back- 
sliding. Mind your mother, and get back here and 
saw wood in your own yard." 

“Mother has hit a psychological moment,” I said to 
myself, “and I shall mind her." I packed up my ex- 
ternal belongings but was not so sure that I was 
getting all of my internal system away with me. The 
people came to the station and gave me their good 
wishes. Mr. Kingsley was kind enough to say that 
they hoped to see me back again next year and re- 
minded me that there was a box of oranges in the 
express car for my mother. Mrs. Kingsley looked at 
me in a motherly and prayerful way, as if she thought 
I was not beyond redemption. The cousins got 
caught in a throng on the platform, and I had to 
imagine the rest. 

After Bob Bamby had carried my handbag into the 
car he paused long enough to say: “I told you that 
115 


116 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


you would start something, but the Lord knew how 
to use it, and I am going to be a better man/’ Bob 
was among the number who united with the church 
as a result of the meeting. 

While the afternoon was dragging heavily along 
and I was trying to forget myself in a newspaper, the 
porter, who had been eyeing me for some time, slipped 
up and said, *‘I’se the only man on this train what 
knows that you is a Beecher.” 

'^Hush, don’t tell anybody,” I said, “but how did 
you find it out?” 

“Well, sah, jes’ as soon as you come on the train 
I knowed it, ’cause when I was a boy I hear Henry 
Ward Beecher preach once, and I knowed you was a 
chip off the old block. Shuah, you is. He combed 
his hair away from his forehead, and kep his ears 
set back, jes’ like you.” 

“You like all the big preachers, don’t you?” I re- 
plied. 

“No, sah; can’t eactly say that I do. I like some 
of ’em, but some of ’em I don’ like. They gets so 
high up that I can’t mos’ always foller ’em. It’s like 
sleepin’ in one of these here cars ; it’s easier to get in 
a lower berth than in an upper berth.” 

“But if you go to sleep in church what is the 
difference?” 

“That’s right, sah, but you have to take a step 
ladder to git in a upper berth, and I don’ like a preach- 
er what makes me use a step ladder to git up to whah 
he’s at. I radder go to a church whah they sing: 
‘Swing low, sweet chariot, a cornin’ for to carry me 
home,’ 

If the chariot swing low, I can get in, but if the 
preacher is up in a flyin’ machine, I can’t cotch up 
with him. 


A PULLMAN PORTER'S PHILOSOPHY 


117 


“I tell you, Mistah, even the big people like a 
lower berth.” 

“You mean that if they do think high, they sleep 
low ?” 

“Yes, sah, yes sah, if the preacher git too high they 
go to sleep.” 

“You must see a good many big people traveling 
up and down this road.” 

Yes, sah, big men an — an stout women. And them 
big rolypoly women give me a lot of trouble. They 
always wan’ the winder open, makes no difference 
how col* the wind a blowin,’ and the man in the nex’ 
seat a shiverin’ an’ a pullin his coat collar up his 
neck an’ a snuffin’ at his nose They ought to ride 
on the cow-catcher an’ git all the win’ what the train 
meets cornin’ up the road. 

“But if the dus’ git in, they say, ‘What a dirty car 
you keep.’ An if a little cin’ner hit them in the eye 
they blame it all on me. Yes, sah, a porter git blamed 
for everything. One night a big fat man fell out of 
a upper berth, an’ I was leanin’ over the lower berth 
fixin’ a pillow, an’ the man he failed right on my back. 
He nearly done smashed my ribs in, but when he 
git up he say, ‘What you tryin’ to kill me fer?’ and 
he cuss at me hard. Then I talk back, an’ he say, 
‘You sassy nigger, I am goin’ to report you to the 
president of the road, and have you bounced.’ 

“When I gits back from the nex’ trip the presi- 
dent he call’ me into the office, and looks black at 
me. Then he say, ‘Jim, you’ve been reported. Did 
a man fall out of an upper berth?’ 

“ ‘Yes, sah,’ says I, kin’ of scared like, ‘he slip and 
fall.’ 

“ ‘Did he fall on your back?’ 

“ ‘Yes, sah,’ says I, skeered plum’ white.’ 

‘“And did he cuss you for it?’ 


118 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“ ^Yes, sah/ I says, 'Jus’ ready to cry.’ 

“Then he look hard at me agin, and he say, 'Jim, 
if ever that fellow falls on your back again’, and 
cusses you for it, punch him in the nose, punch him 
good and hard, and I’ll pay your fine and give you a 
turkey for Christmas.’ 

“Then he laugh, an’ I don’ laugh too. I didn’t 
git my feet down on the groun’ agin’ for two hours.” 

“You ought to be a preacher,” I said, “And then 
you would not be blamed for anything.” 

“Gosh amighty, man, you doesn’t know what 
yous’ talkin’ about, if you am a preacher. The 
preachers and the president of the United States git 
blamed for everything. If they git to fightin’ over 
in Europe, the president is to blame. If they have a 
scrap down in Mexico, the president git Hail Columby 
for not stoppin’ it before it’s done begun. If prices 
go up, they want to knock the president down. If 
prices go down, they blow him up. Yes, sah, hot or 
col’, they make it good and hot for the man in the 
White House. 

“An’ the preachers ! Why, sah, if a preacher parts 
his hair on the right side, they say he ought to part 
it on the lef’ side; an’ if he he part it on the lef’ side, 
they think he ought to part it in the middle. If he 
don’ have any hair worth speakin’ of, they wonder 
why the 'ole cotton top’ don’ use a hair restorer, or 
a wig, or somethin’. Yes, sah, they do. 

“If he don’ go a callin’, they say he jus’ a book 
worm and no good at all out in the win’ and dus’ 
where udder peoples have to go. If he do go callin’, 
they say he’s a nice man, but a no account preacher, 
that he never in his study, that he never gives them 
nothin’ in his sermons, only the little things what 
sticks to his clothes when he is runnin’ aroun’. If 
he preaches so that they can understan’ him they say 


A PULLMAN PORTERS S PHILOSOPHY 119 

he not deep, and if he preaches so that they can't 
understan’ him they say he too dry. 

‘‘If he go to the door when the people are goin' 
out and gives them the glad han', they say he too 
fresh. If he don' go to the door, they say he too 
stuck up. 

“No, boss, I don' want to be no preacher 'till after 
I die. 

“The people all the time a blamin’ the preacher for 
not helpin' in the heavenly way, and they won' budge 
a inch toward heaven they self. I tell you, parson, 
you'll never git a lot of these people to heaven till you 
run a Pullman car all the way, with plenty of Havana 
cigars for the men and novels for the young women, 
and a French manoo for the fat women. It's sur- 
prisin', doctor, how much people travlin' for they 
health can eat. When a woman say she not feelin' 
well, you jes' look out. She goin' to wear you down, 
runnin' for things. She shuah is. A half dozen of 
them kin' bankrup’ a dinin' car, they kin.” 

“What do they talk about?” I asked. 

“They talk about what things they’ve done seen 
somewhere else. Nothin’ ever looks good to them 
whar’ they is. They don' look the way the train runs. 
They always lookin' backward, a seein' what they see 
in Pawree, or Lun'non, or in ole Rome, or some udder 
ole place. If the train run into a orange grove all a 
bloomin' they don' see it; they jes' a seein somethin' 
what they don’ see up the Nile, or when they went 
to the Pyramids, isn’t that what they call them?” 

“Were you in Georgia when that mob lynched the 
negro the other day?” 

“Yes, sah, the train earned through there that 
mornin'.” 

“Why do they lynch so many of your people?” 

“It's this way, Mistah, a neighborhood gits dull. 


120 A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 

Nothin’ excitin’ is goin’ on, an’ the people gits fret- 
ful like, and they wan’ somethin’ to be doin’. Den a 
white man he gits mad at a nigger, and hits him. 
The nigger he gits mad and hits back. The white 
man runs home for he gun, and the nigger runs off 
into the woods for he life. Then they gather up all 
the neighbors and the dogs and they go after that 
nigger up hill and down, through the woods and the 
swamps, and when they cotch him, they swing him 
up to a lim’, to teach him how to keep his place. 
They say they can’t trust the courts, but a court 
down here kin convic’ three niggers in one forenoon, 
and it takes three months to non-convic’ one white 
man. But they hang niggers and don’ hang white 
men. It looks like some of them people think hangin’ 
niggers is fun. An’ I guess it is more fun for them 
than it be for the nigger.” 

”A large number of your people are leaving the 
South, judging from what I see from the papers.” 

‘‘Yes, sah, they sure is. They are a goin’ up 
North, up to St. Louis, an’ Indianapolis, an’ to Chi- 
cago. They’ll make Chicago a good town yet, 
Mistah.” 

“Your people don’t vote much in the South, do 
they ?” 

“No, sah, they don’ quit votin’ for the good of 
they health.” 

“The white man says that the carpet bag govern- 
ments made such a rank smell that he had to disin- 
fect the negro vote clear out of politics.” 

“Yes, sah, he says that, but its mighty oncon- 
venient for a white Dimmycrat to have a lot of black 
Republicans votin’ for the other man, when he’s a 
runnin’ for a office. Dimmycrats have a powerful 
appetite for office down in this country. When a 
man gits elected he gits called ‘Colonel,’ an’ he wife 


A PULLMAN PORTER^S PHILOSOPHY 


121 


gits a new bonnet, an* he girl gets a beau. An office 
is a mighty handy thing down here. They don* wan* 
any nigger foolin* round after it.** 

‘‘But your people seem to be happier than the white 
people.** 

“Yes, parson, anudder white man say that to me 
one day, an* I spose it’s so. An* when I ask him why 
it was so he say, ‘Do you see them black letters on 
that white wall?* I say. Yes, sah, an* he say, ‘The 
black letters take in all de light and de white wall 
throw all the light back, don* take it in at all.* An* 
he say, ‘You black people take in all the sunshine, 
an* it stay inside of you, an make a warm little nes* 
of happiness, an* you feel good inside. We white 
people don* let the sunshine in, jes keep it on the 
outside, sen* it back where it corned from, an* we 
not happy inside.* 

“I said, ‘yes, sah, I guess that’s ’bout it, but I’ll 
trade skins with you.* Then the white man he look 
out of the window and didn’t say nothin’ mo’ ’bout 
hit.” 

“You see and hear a good deal, porter?” 

“Yes, Mistah, but say, did you hear ’bout that 
banker’s girl a trimmin’ the young preacher last Sun- 
day?” 

“I did.” 

“They was all a talkin’ ’bout it when we corned 
up the road. They say she give it to him good, an’ 
I’m mighty glad of it.” 

“So am I.” 




CHAPTER XV. 

The Man on the Road. 

H e is an American production, the man on the 
road, the traveling salesman, the drummer. 
He carries samples of goods in his trunk and 
samples of human nature in his mind. He has his 
goods classified and his types of men classified. He 
stalks one man as a lion does a deer, another he 
watches with the cunning of a fox, another he rushes 
by bold onslaught. He is all things to all men, if by 
any means he may persuade some to buy a bill of 
goods. A good customer is his joy forever, a bad land- 
lord and a worse cook are the dread of his travels. 
The many things which he suffers at their hands, or 
which he thinks he suffers, cannot be written in a book 
— weak coffee, strong butter, tough beefsteak, eggs 
strictly fresh from two years of cold storage, chicken 
that crowed the day the Civil War ended, soup inno- 
cent of all things but water, side dishes cooked, un- 
cooked, raw, burnt, bitter, bad; surveyors, and samp- 
lers of his anatomy at night which get a meal off 
him without paying the bill, beds which would make 
a substitute for asphalt pavement. He is at once a 
martyr and the benefactor of the business world. He 
may be good, medium, mean, or meanest. He may 
leave his heart at home when he begins his journey, 
or he may scatter it around in his travels. He may 
be a welcome arrival when he comes to town or cause 
a sigh of relief when he goes. Merchants may cheer- 

123 


124 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


fully hand him a nice order, or they may want to 
throw a weight at him when they see him coming 
through the door. 

But whatever his particular type, he is an impres- 
sive institution in the American business world. I 
like to have a talk with him, because he knows the 
men who do business on the streets of today, however 
much or little he may know of the men who walked 
the streets of cities buried in the ruins of time. And 
I want to understand the men who sell goods to the 
public through the week and who sample my goods 
on Sunday. 

So when the evening hour was becoming tedious 
I drew near to a man who seemed to belong to the 
traveling profession. He was a clean cut man, and 
looked as if two particular occasions gave him the 
greatest pleasure, when a merchant handed him a big 
order, and when at the end of a long trip he mounted 
the steps of his home and rushed into the arms of his 
wife and children. 

I said to him, **You have had some experience as 
a traveling salesman?^’ 

'‘Yes, sir,” he replied, “What is your line?” 

“I am on the air line between earth and heaven.” 

“You have a pretty long route; you must get tired 
sometimes.” 

“Yes, sir, I meet times and seasons and people 
that make me tired.” 

“I understand that you are introducing some new 
styles in your line; importing them from Germany, 
are you not?” 

“Yes, some originals from Germany and some re- 
productions from England.” 

“Hyphenated theology, so to speak. Does it take 
well?” 


THE MAN ON THE ROAD 


125 


“That depends. It goes better in the East than 
down South. But pardon me, I do not want to dis- 
cuss my line so much as your line of observation. I 
have been in Florida, and have seen the big men of 
the great original trust, and I want to know if I am 
right in thinking that the business men of America 
are a good deal in sympathy with the trust idea.” 

“I prefer to answer that question with an explana- 
tion. When a drummer goes into a store to sell an 
order of goods and the merchant picks at the goods 
and haggles at the prices and uses all the little gags 
known to the trade, you sometimes* get so warm 
under the collar that you wish you could push the 
fellow into a corner and not let him out until he 
bought your whole line and at your own prices. And 
the merchant, in his turn, feels the same way toward 
his customers when he hears all the mean, rasping 
little excuses which they make for not buying after 
wasting his precious time. A woman handles a deli- 
cately trimmed hat for an hour and then does not 
buy it; a young fellow with dirty fingers pulls down 
all the neckties on the line and mauls and musses them 
and then does not buy. I tell you, the man behind the 
counter would give all his old boots and shoes for a 
scheme which would compel such customers to buy, 
and at his price. Now, that is the scheme which the 
originators of the trust discovered or devised, a scheme 
which pushes the public into a corner and says, ‘None 
of your measly excuses now. Stop that carping and 
kicking and trying to twist down the price, for you 
have got to buy from me or go without. Don't tell 
me that you will go around the corner and buy at 
the other store, for I have put the other fellow around 
the corner out of business. I undersold him until he 
had to come into the trust, or quit, and now you 
will buy from me or not at all.’ Yes, sir, the one par- 


126 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


ticular day and night and all-the-year-round purpose 
of the trust is to put the public where it cannot help 
but buy. Therefore the men who are daily going 
through all the fret and fever and sweat and agony 
of selling goods cannot help but admire the scheme.' 
Its discovery interested them more than the discov- 
ery of a new planet interests an astronomer. I re- 
peat, the charm of the 'holding company’ is that it 
holds the buying public where it cannot help itself.” 

"But what about the farmer and the men who 
furnish the raw material?” I asked; "they are sellers 
and they do not like the trust.” 

"No, for the trusts are in the manufacturing busi- 
ness, and they turn on the producers of the raw 
material and make them sell to the combination at 
the combination’s price or not sell at all. And this is 
the double charm of the scheme; it works both ways 
for the benefit of the trust and beautifully.” 

"And this is why the farmers are against it, and 
the business men of the cities are for it?” 

"Yes sir, that is it.” 

"And there are multi-millions in it?” 

"I should say. The promised land in the business 
world is found between the buying price and the sell- 
ing price. A big difference in a big business makes 
a paradise, with waters running over sands of gold, 
with palaces, summer houses, winter houses, yachts, 
limousines, private cars, the fat of the land, and all 
the fat there is on the other fellow’s ribs. A little 
difference between the buying price and the selling 
price is like a farm with thin soil, straggling stalks 
of wheat, sickly hills of corn, lean cattle, and pigs 
squealing with hunger. No difference is a desert. 
Blot out profit and business would come to a dreadful 
standstill. It would be like Byron’s dream of dark- 
ness that I heard somebody quoting the other day” 


THE MAN ON THE ROAD 


127 


‘‘As you come and go in towns, what man seems 
the most important?’' I asked. 

“Well, there usually is a man in each town who 
owns more of it than any other dozen of them put 
together, and of course he is the oracle of the place. 
But in my opinion the editor of the town paper is one 
of the most important spokes in the wheel. Unless 
he happens to be sick abed and about to die he is the 
livest wire in the place, a booster from Boosterville, 
a magnifier and a multiplier. What he does not see 
at hand he does see coming down the road. If the 
town has 1,000 people it is going to have 10,000 or 
20,000. If it already has its 30,000, it is going to be 
another Chicago. All able-bodied editors conjure 
with the name of the Windy City. If his town has 
only one factory, it is going to have a dozen or a 
score; the smoke of the chimneys will blacken the 
sky. If there is only one railroad there will be half a 
dozen before many years. 

“Yes, sir, he is a booming boomer. And he is so 
good to everybody. If the homeliest girl in town 
gets married, he makes her the beautiful bride. If 
the meanest man in the town dies, he laments his 
death as if his heart would break. If the minister 
preaches a sermon, he calls it ‘the most eloquent dis- 
course ever heard in our city.’ If Mrs. Brown goes 
over the way to see Mrs. Jones, he makes it a social 
event. If Mrs. Smith’s niece comes in from Hillville 
to see her, she is ‘the most charming young lady who 
ever visited in our town.’ Yes, he is a barrel of mo- 
lasses, fresh every morning, new every evening, a 
sugar tree running all the year round, smiling when 
his heart is aching over unpaid subscriptions, a bor- 
rowed horse with everybody who has a publicity 
scheme up his sleeve on his tired back. He is ex- 
pected to do everything for the good of the cause and 


128 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


to have no cause for complaint, if he himself has 
nothing to eat and his family has nothing to wear. 

“Yes sir, I take off my hat to the editor of the 
town paper and hope that the dues which he cannot 
collect in this world will be paid in another world, 
good measure, pressed down and running over.’^ 

“Do you go to church when you are in town?’^ 
“Yes, sir, always. If there is anything that a 
traveling man needs to keep him in moral repair dur- 
ing the week, it is the church on Sunday. It is a 
mighty poor preacher who cannot do a man some 
good, even if he does ably dispense with the text, as 
the colored brother said in his closing prayer about 
the other brother’s sermon. The text itself is likely 
to put some plaster in the chink which the week has 
made in the wall. 

“And I have no sympathy with that sneer at the 
churches because of the deacon who cheated in a horse 
trade. There are deacons and deacons, of course, but 
that deacon is the worst over-done man in America. 
The skeptics and the scoffers have ridden him to 
death. And the meanest thing about it is that he 
should be such a joy to them. Why should I or you 
or any decent man living in such a world of tempta- 
tion and sin as this want to see a good man lose his 
footing on a slippery place and go down? That kind 
of rejoicing comes out of hell. Don’t we need good 
men? Don’t we want to see good men multiply and 
fill the earth? What kind of a world will we have if 
we persuade ourselves that all the men supposed to be 
good are so only because they have not been found 
out? The devil could not improve upon that kind of 
theory of human life.” 

“Why don’t people go to church more?” 

“I have asked myself that question in more than 
one town which I have visited. Good preachers, good 


THE MAN ON THE ROAD 


129 


choir, beautiful surroundings, comfortable pews, and 
half the seats empty! Sometimes I think that the 
Protestant churches need a 'holding company’ to hold 
the people up to the rack while the shepherds give 
them their fodder. The Catholic churches have their 
crowd; the people blacken the sidewalks coming and 
going. But the Catholic church has a trust. Talk 
about the trust being original to America! Why, 
there was a religious trust in Old Rome centuries 
ago. In the language of the scholarly evangelist of 
the day, a bunch of fellows got together in the Eternal 
City and formed a 'holding company.’ They called 
the president Pope, and the directors Cardinals, and 
they went out and laid hold of kings, empires, nations, 
peoples — gripped them like a vise, monopolised this 
world and the other. Since man began to walk on 
earth and look up toward heaven, there never was 
anything else equal to it in vastness of combination 
and organization and in grip of power. It is still 
mighty. An infallible church is an attempt at an un- 
failing, irresistible monopoly. 

“The little boy who was asked to explain purga- 
tory said, 'It is the place where Catholics stop on the 
way to hell; it smells bad, but they use incense.’ 
Without endorsing the little boy’s remark, I can say 
that the trusts smell bad, but they use incense. A 
smooth politician or wily editor swings the censer. 
The religious trust says, Tf you resist me you resist 
God.’ The business trust says, 'If you fight me, you 
fight business.’ And a lot of people tumble to the 
sophistry of one or the other. 

“But for all that,” continued the gentleman, “and 
while I say perish the thought that American 
Protestantism ever should attempt to set up a religious 
monopoly, I wish sometimes that there was not so 
much talk about liberty. It always is the neglected 


130 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


side of religion which calls for new or special empha- 
sis. And liberty is not now the neglected side. 
There is so much free space in the pews now that the 
wind could blow through many of them without 
fanning a cheek, and there is so much freedom in 
some of the pulpits that the people are in danger of 
thinking that it does not make any difference what a 
man believes, and I want to tell you that when the 
people begin to think that they soon jump to the con- 
clusion that it does not make any difference whether 
they go to church or not.” 

When we rose to separate, I said to the gentleman, 
'T forgot to ask what line you are in.” 

was a drummer,” he replied, ‘‘until I acquired 
a knowledge of human nature; then I went into poli- 
tics, and now I am governor of my state.” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

At HokE Again. 

aTTOME, sweet home !” Everything has a 
j[ I home. Foxes have holes in the ground; 
birds of the air have nests; tiny creatures 
gather under a leaf and make it a roof over their 
heads. Turn up a stone and the scrambling little 
natives make you regret that you have broken into a 
home. 

And what is home without a mother? Nobody 
can give such a greeting to a returning boy as a 
mother. And no heart aches like hers when a boy 
or girl never returns. Hers is the hardest heartache 
in all the years of sighs and tears, and hers is the 
greatest gratification when all goes well. No other 
one listens with such attentive ear and beaming face 
to the story of achievement or with such a soul of 
sympathy over disappointment as a mother. 

I went up the step with a bound and mother came 
at me with a rush. It was the best part of the trip. 
It usually is. The thrill of the American traveler 
across the sea comes when he sights the American 
coast. 

She put me down to a warm breakfast, and also 
on the witness stand to answer a stream of questions. 
“Did I really like Florida? Was it good for my 
health ? How much had I gained in weight, not 
counting the tan? How big a fish story could I tell 
and be reasonably truthful? Did the alligators come 
131 


132 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


into the front yard and take the pet dog off the 
front porch? Could the mosquitoes bite through a 
laundered collar? Did I meet any interesting people 
down there?’’ 

Then she stopped to take breath, and during the 
pause I replied that I met some of her former 
friends. ‘^Do you remember a family named Kings- 
ley?” I asked. ^‘Members of one of father’s churches?” 

“Yes,” she replied, “no pastor’s wife could forget 
Mrs. Kingsley. She was called the faithful woman of 
the church ; always in her pew on Sunday and always 
at prayer meeting. Mr. Kingsley also was quite 
regular in his attendance, but I think that he had 
some serious business worries.” 

“Do you remember a little girl in the family, ten 
or eleven years old?” 

“Yes, there was an incident which made me re- 
member her. A big circus show came to town one 
day and all the boys and girls went trooping along 
after the procession. The little black-faced man who 
had charge of the big elephant kept prodding him 
with a sharp goad, and you exclaimed, ‘Why don’t 
that big elephant throw that black little rat over the 
fence?’ T know,’ said the little girl, ‘why he doesn’t 
do it; it is because he does not know that he is an 
elephant.* Then she added in an innocent kind of 
way, ‘you could be an elephant some day if you only 
knew it.’ Her remark seemed to make quite an im- 
pression on you, and for several days you went around 
saying, ‘I could be an elephant if I only knew it.’ 
Then you began to get your lessons as you never 
had done before. The teachers remarked about it 
and wondered what ever had gotten into you. But 
what about her?” 

“Nothing much, only, if you had seen her throw- 
ing a preacher over the fence one Sunday afternoon 


AT HOME AGAIN 


133 


you would have thought that she had become the 
elephant.” 

“I hope you were not the preacher.” 

I evaded an answer by asking what else she re- 
membered about her. 

“I remember that when we were leaving she asked 
for your picture. I told her that I could not spare it, 
that it was the only one I had. But she looked so 
disappointed and so ready to cry that I finally gave 
it to her. I thought that if I had the boy the child 
could have the picture.” 

“But what would you think if she got both?” 

Mother started as if I had thrown something at 
her. “Has it come to that?” she exclaimed. 

“No, no, mother,” I replied. “Don’t be so much 
alarmed. That little girl is some woman now, and 
she is not wearing her heart on her sleeve. She 
keeps her theological opinions on the front gate, but 
if she has anything in the way of a love affair I don’t 
know a thing about it. She is a mask when it comes 
to that.” 

“She had opinions when she was a. little girl. 
Your father used to call her the little stand-up-for- 
something girl. She always was standing up for 
somebody or something.” 

“You ought to have seen her standing up for 
me! But what was the matter with the pulpit sup- 
plies that the congregation ran down so badly?” 

“Well, one looked at the ceiling too much ; another 
looked at his manuscript too much ; another got up in 
the air and stayed there until the congregation lost 
sight of him ; another was so deep that he could only 
be followed by those who knew how to dive, a kind 
of submarine preacher ; another was too dry ; and still 
another too wet — he told sad stories and shed tears 
over them when his hearers did not.” 


134 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“You are not knocking, are you mother?” 

“No, I am only answering your question by echo- 
ing the opinions of the people. For my part I en- 
joyed the preachers. It was a relief not to sit in a 
pew aching all over with responsibility for my^ own 
kid in the pulpit. But give them your best next Sun- 
day, and don't announce a series of Sunday addresses 
on your trip to the Southland.” 

“Why not? Sermons need a fresh breeze now and 
then. Straw run through the mills of the ages be- 
comes rather dry.” 

“So it does, and I won’t mind something a little 
fresh, but don’t make it too fresh. I don’t want to 
take up the church bulletin and see you announcing 
a list of subjects like, ‘The Smile of the Florida Alli- 
gator,’ and similar themes. Make it worth while, 
something with length and breadth and a reasonable 
amount of thickness.” 

I tried to act on my mother’s suggestion, to get a 
fresh breeze along with a wide principle; and I took 
my text from the words of Daniel: “In the end of 
the years they shall join themselves together; for the 
king’s daughter of the South shall come to the king 
of the North to make an agreement.” 

My sermon was somewhat as follows : 

When the Civil War was menacing the land, it 
was said that we could not have a dissolution of the 
Union, for that would mean a national line across the 
Mississippi river. And it is in the eternal plan of the 
continent that the great river should be for one people, 
that its ships of commerce should float to the sea un- 
hindered by national barriers, unvexed by tariff or 
custom-houses. But the war was not far in the past 
when the commerce of the great river began to 
dwindle, and the might and magnitude of its trade 
were displaced by the railroad. We enter a palatial 


AT HOME AGAIN 


135 


coach at our station, headed for the tip-end of the 
South. It is our home for the passage, our eating 
place, sleeping place, reading place, social gathering 
place, all. It would mar the plan if we had to wake 
up iii^the middle of the night and betray our belong- 
ings to the weasel eyes of a custom’s collector — an 
American custom house is a horror on earth. No. 
The railroads have riveted North and South together. 
Their steel rails are like the steel rods which rein- 
force concrete. Every stroke of the wheels seemed 
to me to be saying with incessant ring, “The Union 
forever, the Union forever, one and inseparable.” 

Now note the significance of it. Nature made the 
river, and it has lost its power as an argument for 
union. Man made the railroads, and every day their 
argument for union lengthens, strengthens, tightens 
its grip. In a word, natural boundaries, rivers, 
mountains, seas, are not enough for human union, for 
deeper nationality. It must have the human factor, 
the human link. The tie which binds is man-made 
rather than nature made. The king’s daughter of the 
South and the king of the North made an agreement. 
The daughter of the South took the spinning wheels 
of the North into her own borders, and the women of 
the South joined the women of the North in the great 
temperance movement. Now there is a commercial, 
industrial, moral and social agreement. 

But railroads cross state lines, and that gives them 
pause. State lines should not give too much pause. 
They should lie low when these mighty trains come 
thundering down the track. We are not forty-eight 
different nationalities. Our state autonomy is one of 
the happiest devices of American government, for the 
states provide for variety in human nature. A mo- 
notonous mass of human beings is not interesting. 
America is the most interesting country on earth be- 


136 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


cause we have given freedom of action to the parts 
which make the Union. In a sense, state rights are 
the rights of human beings to live their own life. Let 
them not be blotted out. But let them not block the 
great highways of travel, for it is one of the heaven 
born rights of the American people when they set out 
to travel to get there as quickly as possible. I am 
saying this, not because it is strictly religious, but 
because I consider it the right view of a very live 
question, emphasized by my own observation while 
flying across the land. 

Another matter of interest which pressed upon 
my attention was the relation of races. A superior 
race came to the new Continent. An inferior race al- 
ready here refused to bow to the intruder, and they 
were exterminated. We brought in another inferior 
people who could be exploited, coerced into service. 
Both races made trouble for us, the one race because 
they could and would fight, the other because they 
could not or would not fight. The wars of America 
were Indian wars, then the Civil War. Mark the sig- 
nificance of this line of facts. The attitude of a 
superior people toward an inferior people may be the 
source of vast trouble. No race can do as it pleases 
toward another race, no matter how great its superi- 
ority, how great its power, or how haughty its pride. 
There comes a day of reckoning, a day of retribution, 
when all the cries and tears and agonies and wrongs 
of careless and uncounted years turn into a storm of 
wrath and sweep back over the haughty aggressor 
without pity and without stopping a moment to con- 
sider the protests of sentiment or the pleas of self- 
love. The superior powers of the Old World have 
exploited the barbarian, and they have paid for it in 
treasure untold, in streams of blood. You may call it 
divine wrath, retribution, the judgment day of history. 


AT HOME AGAIN 


137 


or what you will; it is there. You may even deny 
it, but the world weeps and men perish. 

I tremble when I think of the inferior peoples and 
realize that our peace depends upon our attitude 
toward them. They are a temptation to the exploit- 
ing* spirit. Their undeveloped resources, their un- 
touched wealth invite the aggressor, the lawless lust 
for gain. Then comes wrong, then comes trouble. 
The peace of the world rests in the attitude of the 
superior man to the inferior man. We may talk as 
we will about the white man’s burden and about the 
paramount nation, the one imperative business of the 
superior man is to behave himself in the presence of 
his inferiors as well as his equals. And in my opinion 
nothing but the Christian religion ever will make him 
do that. 

We love our own class, or our own country. God 
alone loves all classes, all countries, mankind; and it 
is only when we get the God-like spirit in us that we 
love the human race. In the kingdom of God there is 
neither Greek nor Roman, bond nor free. 

There is Africa ; there is Asia ; there is the Orient ; 
and across our borders is Mexico. What is our atti- 
tude toward them going to be? Are we going to 
exploit them, or give them the hand of a brother? 
I repeat, I tremble when I think of the answer to the 
question. And yet again, I rejoice when I think what 
it can be, what it may be. We are a great people, we 
can easily be a noble people. 

But we are not altogether a happy people. This 
fact was flared in my face frequently when I was in 
the procession that seeks the sunshine of the Florida 
coast. Men knock and complain and grumble. One 
world-trotting resorter in Florida, full of porcupine 
quills, can make a score of natives unhappy. If it 
were not for the money which he spends some of them 


138 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


would take to the woods when they see the knocker 
coming. I heard his complaints, his angry voice. 
Then I listened to the laughter of the black man, his 
song in the field, the lullaby from his little cabin 
floating through the darkness of the evening like the 
melody which birds make in the trees, and I wondered 
why it should be so. But every race has a little cor- 
ner within where something rare seems to grow; and 
the black race has its patience and its cheerful dispo- 
sition. No nation alone can make a garden of the 
gods. Each race, each people must bring their con- 
tributions before civilization can complete its work. 
‘‘Up to this time,” says one of the present-day philoso- 
phers, “civilization has only made its people more 
sensitive.” It has a harder task to make them better 
satisfied. And here the neglected races may yet fur- 
nish a large contribution. 

Therefore I repeat that the attitude of the superior 
peoples to the inferior peoples will make or mar the 
future The call of the missionary is a call to 
Christianity to complete its conquest and a call to 
civilization to complete itself. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

A Minister and Trouble. 

T he pastor of a city church is like Job’s man of 
“few days and full of trouble.” His days are 
too few for the many demands upon his time, 
and he has troubles of his own and troubles of num- 
erous other people. The home-sick boy, whose 
money is gone when Christmas is near, comes to the 
minister. The woman whose husband is gone with- 
out having said goodbye and has left her to struggle 
for herself and her little ones comes to the minister 
with her trouble. The dead beat with a little scheme 
up his sleeve and a false story on his lips comes to the 
minister, and he is apt to get him. 

It was the second week after my return that 1 
heard a knock at my study door, and on answering it 
I was met by two timid, hesitating women. They 
requested me to visit the daughter of an old friend, 
who was in the city and very ill. I took the address 
and made the call in the afternoon. The place at 
which I found the address was a shabby house on a 
back street, and after climbing two flights of stairs, I 
was ushered into a front room overlooking a daily 
procession of poverty and misery. A young woman 
sat in a chair near the window with her head leaning 
against a pillow. The flush on her cheeks and the 
bright light in her eyes revealed the nature of her 
illness. 


139 


140 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


‘'Are you the minister?*’ she asked. 

“Yes,” I said, “were you looking for me?” 

“They told me that you might come.” 

“Can I do anything for you? It would be a real 
pleasure to me.” 

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she replied languidly. 
“The doctors do not seem able to do anything for me, 
and I guess all you can do is to talk to me.” 

“If I knew your story perhaps I could talk better 
to you.” 

“I don’t know, there is nothing new in it; it is 
that poor old story, a joyous young girl coming to the 
city with high hopes in her heart and then a wreck 
going to her grave with a shadow on her name.” 

She hesitated, turned her face toward the wall for 
a moment or two and then went on. 

“I came from a country home, a good home, and 
a good mother. She kissed me with the tears in her 
eyes and a God bless you on her lips. I secured a fair 
position and was doing well. I was contented and 
reasonably happy. In the course of time a young 
man wanted to marry me and I think I should have 
accepted his offer. But one day,” and she paused 
again, leaned back and put her thin little hands over 
her face. When she had recovered she went on. “It 
was a Sunday afternoon, and I went to one of the 
big halls to hear a noted woman lecturer. At first 
her talk seemed quite strange to me. I had not heard 
anybody talk that way back in our country town. But 
I listened, and soon I was clapping my hands along 
with the rest of the crowd of young people and older 
people. The lecturer blamed everything on society 
and conditions, nothing on us. And how they did ap- 
plaud. I always had been taught to believe that if we 
did wrong we ourselves were to blame. But no, she 
would not have it that way at all. It was the big 


A MINISTER AND TROUBLE 


141 


city, the environment — I think that was the word she 
used so much. No young man or young woman did 
wrong. It was the environment, the slums, she 
shrieked. And then they shook the building with 
their applause. And this made her talk wilder than 
ever. 

“It rattled me. To be honest, I rather liked the 
idea that I was not to blame if I wanted to do wrong, 
that I never had been and never would be to blame. 
There is something in our sinful hearts that tells that 
kind of talk to come in and stay awhile. Perhaps 
mother would have called it the devil, but the woman 
lecturer scoffed and jeered at the idea of the devil 
until the laughter and applause shook the roof again, 
and I joined in. 

“Surely that talk stayed with me. It made me 
restless and dissatisfied. Oh, if I only had got a good 
letter from mother that week it might have braced me 
up. But as it happened she was sick and did not 
write. Having got the taste for such talk I went to 
every meeting where I could hear it, and there is 
good and plenty of it in a city like this. Then I felt 
my feet slipping, but it did not alarm me, and when 
my mother wrote that she felt concerned over the tone 
in my letters I just thought she was an old fogy, away 
behind the times out in that country town. I was not 
to blame, would not be to blame, I kept thinking, only 
society, the city, the back alley or the lamp post, or I 
don’t know what, would be responsible. I had a right 
to live my own life,. as I read in the paper that a 
professor said. And when a girl’s thoughts are there. 
Mister, her feet are at the edge.” 

She put her trembling little hand to her eyes again 
and with her white face hid she sobbed. “I went 
down, I went down, and I kept going down. And 
here I am. Oh, if I only could be back a year!” 


142 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


And she sobbed convulsively again. When she had 
become more composed, I said to her, “My dear young 
woman, I fear that you did not interpret the views of 
the lecturer quite right. Society is somewhat to 
blame.’^ 

“Oh, don't tell me that, she almost shrieked. 
That was the poison that poisoned my young life, that 
made me the tempter’s easy prey, that threw me 
wrecked and hopeless on a sick bed. And I did not 
think that you would tell me that; that is why I 
wanted to talk with you. I thought you would un- 
derstand. ‘Society ! Society !’ Don’t talk to me 
about society. Why should I hang all my fate on 
society? Didn’t I have a will of my own? Couldn’t 
I say no, instead of throwing myself like a straw on 
the stream and the whirl we call society? Does so- 
ciety come in here and bear my pain, my fever, my 
sleepless nights, my aching heart? Oh, no, no. I 
have had to pay all the dreadful price. Why didn’t 
I stand up and fight for myself? The consequences 
are all mine, I had a right to the choice. And I did 
have it until that fool and fiendish lecturer talked me 
out of it. I call her a fiend,” she cried in wild anger, 
“because there is no worse imp in hell than the man 
or woman who teaches a young woman that she is 
not the chief defender of her own honor. My soul 
is my own. God gave it to me to keep. Oh, why 
didn’t I keep it? Why didn’t I keep it?” 

The poor girl sank back exhausted, and closed her 
eyes. The tears were streaming down my own cheeks, 
and with a sob in my voice I said to her, “You are 
too sick to talk any more now. I shall come again 
tomorrow.” 

At a floral establishment I purchased a bunch of 
roses and ordered them delivered at her room. When 
I returned the next day she greeted me with a faint 


A MINISTER AND TROUBLE 


143 


smile and a glance at the flowers. “I know you sent 
them/' she said, “and I thank you so much. They 
may last until I go, for the doctor was here this morn- 
ing and he told me that I could not live much longer." 

I sat down and talked to her about the Christ. I 
told her what a beautiful life He lived, what a great 
example He was, and how wise a teacher. 

When I paused she shook her head sadly and re- 
plied, “He lived a beautiful life, but I can’t do that 
now, my life is gone, blighted, ruined. And what can 
I do now with his example or his wisdom? I sit here 
through the day, and I toss in my bed at night, think- 
ing of my sins. Oh, the dreadful sin of it all! And 
sometimes when I cannot sleep I stagger to the win- 
dow and look up at the stars and wonder if my dear 
mother who died last year is in some beautiful land 
and will take me by the hand. Sometimes I can al- 
most see her standing at a beautiful window and hear 
her say, ‘Come home, darling, come home and stay 
with your mother.’ Then I think of my past and the 
beautiful city slips from view. Oh, minister, minister, 
sin darkens heaven. A sin covered soul shrinks from 
the holy, and heaven must be holy. If only I could 
get rid of the thought of my sin I think I could close 
my eyes in a peaceful sleep.’’ 

I tried hard to comfort her, but my words did not 
satisfy the cry of her soul for deliverance from her 
sin. Telling her that I would call again I went back 
to my study and tried to resume work on a sermon 
which I had announced that I would preach on the 
beautiful world in which we live. But the white face 
of the disappointed young woman haunted me so much 
that I laid down my work and took up a letter which 
I had forgotten to open. It contained an invitation 
to preach a sermon at a leading college. “Yes," I 
said to myself, “I can preach to students and profes- 


144 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


sors, but I wish I could talk to that dying girl. Why 
didn’t I take my theological course in the cellars and 
garrets of the city instead of in a seminary!” 

But then I do not want to lay too much ministerial 
weakness to the professors in the seminary, for those 
poor mortals stumble along with the rest of us. 

Fortunately there was a knock at the door and a 
cheery voice said, “I am coming right in, my boy, 
how are you today?” 

He was the dear old Pastor Emeritus, white- 
haired and with the serene face of an angel, lingering 
on the shores of time — for a last look at our busy 
world before he went up to look at it from the land 
where there is no night and where no shadows fall and 
the voice of crying is not heard. 

I said to him, “I always am so glad to see you, but 
never so glad as this time, for I have a case on my 
hands that seems beyond me.” Then I told him about 
the poor girl and asked him to visit her. You have 
pointed so many troubled souls to heaven, I said, that 
I know you can show her the way. 

The dear old man went and kept going every day 
until the end came. And she looked for his coming 
as she watched for the beams of morning after a night 
of pain. A beautiful calm came over her face while 
he explained to her the way of salvation. 

As she was closing her eyes for the last sleep she 
said, “I am going home to my Savior and my dear 
mother.” When her father came he bent over his 
dead child and in shaking agony cried, “Oh, that we 
had held you in our arms always, that we had never 
let you go from us.” 

I said to him, “She is in safer arms now than yours. 
Her feet will never again stray away with an evil 
company. She is in that company which God is 
making up, the company of his redeemed ones.” 


A MINISTER AND TROUBLE 


145 


In his simple words at the funeral service the 
veteran pastor said: “We double the danger when 
we weaken the old moral supports of these young souls. 
Let them take the foundations from under the bridges 
which carry the railroad trains over the stream, but 
far more reckless and dangerous is it to take the old 
foundations from under the lives of our young men 
and women. May God save us from that new peril 
made by willful hands hewing at the pillars of the 
temple ! And may the day never come when there is 
no Cross left to which the pity of the believing heart 
can point the penitent sinner!’^ 

I did not preach the sermon on our beautiful world 
as I had planned. I preached on sin and salvation, 
and told the story which I have been telling you. 
Many were weeping at the close of the sermon. As 
the people were going out I heard them remarking, 
“How he has changed, how he has changed.” 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Little List of Callers. 

T he next caller in my trouble list was a young 
elder in my church, one of those lion-like men 
who have strength in their faces and a spring 
in their step, alert, eager. You like to see them move, 
to hear them speak; there is such a suggestion of 
mastery in it. The gentleman was vice-president of 
a railroad company and was supposed to be living on 
Easy Street. 

“There is something which troubles me,^’ he said, 
“I want to talk it over with you. Some of the high 
officials of the company want the division superin- 
tendents instructed to hold empty freight cars on the 
side tracks. They desire it done to make an artificial 
shortage, to make the public believe that the railroad 
companies do not have cars enough to move the 
country’s freight.” 

“Why do they want to do that?” I asked. 

“To make the public believe the next thing, which 
is that the railroads do not have revenue enough to 
equip their lines with a service adequate to increased 
demands.” 

“And then what?” 

“To make a demand at Washington for a change 
of railroad regulation and to get out from under all 
state control and set up full fledged federal con- 
trol.” 

“Now I am not saying that there is no need for a 
147 


148 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


change, because I think that forty-eight state bosses 
and the Interstate Commerce Commission are too 
many. Railroads can’t stop at state lines. Con- 
ductors cannot see them in the daytime nor feel them 
at night, and the ‘twilight zone,’ as Mr. Bryan so 
aptly called it, needs more daylight. What I don’t 
like is this proposed way of going at things. If I 
want a chicken for dinner I believe in going to the 
market and buying it openly, and not in throwing a 
stone at it in my neighbor’s yard and then if he 
catches me telling him that I was trying to hit a 
rat. When there already is a coal shortage I can’t 
stand it to make it worse, knowing that women and 
children will suffer because the price has gone above 
their means. But it is pretty serious business setting 
yourself against the high officials of a corporation. 
What would you do?” 

“The honest thing,” I replied. 

“Suppose you preach a sermon, a stiff sermon, on 
it; that will help me through, for some of them are in 
our congregation.” 

“I don’t know about that.” 

“Are you afraid of being one of the fools who 
rush in where angels fear to tread?” 

“Wall Street angels, you mean,” I said with a 
smile. 

“Wings of angels don’t often fan the faces on 
Wall Street. But you preached a sermon on Daniel 
last Sunday; dare to be a Daniel for my sake and the 
good of the cause.” 

“And get into the lion’s den? But here is the real 
objection. I have an aversion to preaching on a pub- 
lic question unless I study it through and thoroughly 
know my subject. A lot of preachers go off half- 
cocked. They get up and scream about things of 
which they know little and ought to say less. How- 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


149 


ever there is a principle here and I can follow that.” 

I preached the sermon, and when it was over I 
saw some men looking daggers at me, although there 
was a little outbreak of applause during the discourse. 

At the next annual meeting of the railroad com- 
pany the elder was not re-elected vice-president. It 
was said that they wanted a stronger man. Have 
corporations souls? Sometimes; it depends on the 
circumstances and the individuals. And then again, 
their souls are like the material which a minister puts 
away for his sermons, and which gets lost in such a 
pile of stuff that he cannot find it when most needed. 

My next caller was a brother minister. We had 
been chummy, and he frequently dropped in. ‘'There 
is a vacant pulpit out in Chicago,” he said, “a good 
one, and we want to see a man there who is right, 
one of our kind. We don^t want an old fogy there, a 
man with the moss of ages on his back, preaching the 
‘old gospel’ as he calls it, and all that kind of thing. 
But the trouble is that the church has its eye on just 
that kind of a man. They have heard him preach and 
like him. They said that his sermon fed them — you 
know how such people talk. 

“Now, we want you to help us head him off, for 
we understand that they are going to write to you 
about him, and ask you for your advice.” 

“They have written,” I said. “I received the let- 
ter this morning.” 

“Have you answered it yet?” 

“No.” 

“Good. When you write them don’t say anything 
about his theology, but tell them that his better-half 
does not make a good pastor’s wife — we know that to 
be the case. She does nothing but take care of her 
five children.” 


150 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


‘‘But that would not do any good,” I replied, “for 
they would say that they are not calling his wife, but 
him.” 

“Well then, tell them that he does not get along 
with his church, for we happen to know that he did 
have a little trouble with a church once. It is true 
that a woman who had run out four other pastors 
started it, but you don’t need to explain. Bear down 
on him hard for it.” 

“Oh, hold on,” I said, with a slam on the top of 
my desk, “I am not going to do anything of the kind. 
If I don’t want that man called to that church on 
account of his theology I’ll say so, and say it in such 
cold black and white that the church will know ex- 
actly what I mean. If I can’t get a man of our kind 
— or rather of your kind — in a pulpit without sneak- 
ing him in through the basement door and up the steps 
in a mask, I shall not get him in at all. If that 
church feels that he would be the man to lead them 
into green pastures, let them call him. That is what 
shepherds of the flock are for, and green pastures grow 
beside some mighty old rivers.” 

“Why, what has come over you,” he said, looking 
keenly into my face. “You did not use to talk so 
strong. You must have got too much salt air into 
your system down in Florida. You need to be fresh- 
ened up, like a salt mackerel.” 

“Perhaps, but I begin to think that some of our 
fellows are getting too fresh. We can’t throw away 
everything because it is old. We have got to give the 
people something for our salaries, and something for 
their souls. They can’t keep alive on barren specula- 
tion or the hot air which we blow over it.” 

“Then you don’t want to help us to land a man in 
that church?” 


A LITTLE LIST OF CALLERS 


151 


''No. For all I know, the next pastor has already 
been called from the foundation of the world. Any- 
how, the Lord knows more about what they need than 
I do. Let them write to heaven, not to New York, 
for advice.*' 

It was a long time before the brother called again, 
and when he did call a north wind seemed to come 
through the door with him.” 


My next callers were a man and his wife, a little 
old couple. The woman did the talking, and I got 
the impression that the man was a kind of silent sen- 
tinel in their home. 

"We are from the country,” she began, "and are 
here visiting relatives. Our name is Hood, Thomas 
Hood and me. We have been married thirty-five 
years, day after tomorrow. My father ran for the 
legislature once, and his father ran a thrashing 
machine. My grandfather ran in debt and got busted. 
His grandfather ran away with a neighbor's girl and 
got married. It ran in the family. There is more 
money in running a thrashing machine than there is 
in running for the legislature, unless a man gets 
elected, and my father did not get elected. The 
whisky crowd was with the other man, and my father 
was on the water wagon. And he did not know very 
well how to drive it. His hand was not steady enough, 
especially after he stopped with the boys at a road 
house. If Thomas and me ever run for the legisla- 
ture I will drive the wagon.” 

"Hold on, mother,” said the silent sentinel, "or 
the minister won’t know what you are driving at.” 

"Well, this is what I’m driving at ; we have a son, 
Thomas Hood, Jr. We named him after his father, 
and a poet, because I had been reading poetry just 
before we were married. It was a good thing that we 


152 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


thought of the poet's name, for it got into the child's 
system at the start. He began to accumulate poetry 
when he was a little fellow. And how he could speak 
it! When the superintendent come to see the school 
and the teacher was showing the school oif, she al- 
ways put our little Thomas up to speak a piece. My ! 
you ought to have heard that little fellow standing up 
there before the whole school, and saying: 

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star. 

Up above the house so high, 

How you must wonder what I are. 

When you see me on the fly.” 

“You haven't got that right, mother,” said the 
silent sentinel. 

“I have it right enough, and I am telling this 
story, Thomas Hood. 

“When I saw how he could speak poetry, I said, 
‘What a minister he will make some day!' And I 
encouraged him to keep on acquiring rhymes. Now 
he is full of it, and what a sermon that boy could 
preach! And when I told him that Daniel Webster 
was the biggest orator that ever fought at Bunker 
Hill or stood at Plymouth Rock and declaimed, ‘The 
boy stood on the burning deck,* Thomas began to 
talk like him. Now he can say E Pluribus Unum, the 
spread eagle forever, just like Webster, with his voice 
down in his bosom and his eyes a rolling up. I would 
like to see him in the pulpit rolling his eyes up to 
heaven just like you. I tell you he would make the 
people sit up and take notice just as much as you 
do.” 

When I had stopped laughing, she went on. 

“You are not serious enough. Mister. You ought 
to wear a black gown in the pulpit; it would make 
you look more solemn. A black gown is becoming 


A LITTLE LIST OF CALLERS 


153 


to a man who is telling other people what will become 
of them when they die.” 

“Get to the point, mother,” said the sentinel, “you 
will wear the minister out.” 

“Keep quiet, Thomas Hood, I am doing this talk- 
ing. 

“And you ought to part your hair in the middle. 
My Thomas does, and that was what first arrested 
my attention and made me think something was com- 
ing down the road. He got to parting his hair in 
the middle, and a standing before the looking glass 
and tying his necktie on one way, and then taking 
it off and tying it on another way, and pulling his 
coat up this way and down that way, and striking 
attitudes. When a boy does them kind of things be- 
fore a looking glass you just know that there is a girl 
behind it. 

“And there was, a farmer’s girl who lived across 
the road from us. He thought that she was pretty, 
but I didn’t. I said she had freckles on her face, but 
he said her father had a thousand acres of the best 
land in the county, and if he could land her he would 
be set up for the rest of his days.” 

“Set up for life, I said, why Thomas Hood, Jr., 
you have set up with that girl all your life for the 
last six months, and it is about time that you settled 
down to farming, or something more useful than court- 
ing. 

“Yes sir, I think that couple had burnt more fire- 
wood than any ordinary family would burn in two 
years, settin’ up and a settin’ up. And Mister, isn’t 
it vicious for the newspapers to hit the mother-in- 
law with such mean little squibs, when every mother- 
in-law’s son of them has burnt up more of her fire- 
wood than they are worth ; the spoony, good for noth- 
ing creatures. And chickens! I’ve known women 


154 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


who had to cook every chicken on the place while 
their daughters were trying to catch their young fel- 
lows. It isn’t right, Mister, and I tell you when we 
get the ballot we are going to fill every last office with 
a mother-in-law. We are, and mind what I say 
Thomas Hood.” 

“But I infer,” I said, “that you yourself are not 
in a hurry to be a mother-in-law.” 

“You are right, that is what I am coming to.” 

“Hurry up, mother,” said the silent sentinel ; “this 
church is paying the minister $5000 a year fo< his 
time, and he can’t give a whole da}^ to you.” 

“Keep still, Thomas, you have made your pile, me 
and you together, and we needn’t worry.” 

“But, Doctor, what I am coming at is this; we 
want our Thomas to be a minister, and he wants to 
get married.” 

“Can’t he do both?” I asked. 

“Not if you can’t, for I don’t think that he is 
much smarter than you are.” 

“I realize the force of your argument, but go on.” 

“There isn’t any more going on to do. There is a 
blockade. He says I am going to get married, and 
we say, Tf you do, Thomas, your ship can’t come into 
our port no more.’ And there we are, standing dead 
still. He is just like his father, bound to have his own 
way. If he was more like his mother we could get 
some where.” 

“What do you want me to do?” 

“I want you to write him, and tell him if he 
wants to be a smart man in the pulpit and have 
winning ways with his members, not to get married.” 

“I will think about it.” 

“Do, and excuse me for keeping you talking so 
much; you must be tired. Good bye, and mind your 
mother.” 


A LITTLE LIST OF CALLERS 


155 


funny little woman,” I said to myself, after 
they were gone. hope she will come back again 
some Monday when I have the blues.” But there 
are others. There is a nice little boy in the family 
who keeps his hair combed and his face washed — and 
repeats poetry or ‘‘speaks pieces” in school, and then 
his fond mother thinks he ought to be a minister. She 
does not stop to ask whether he has great convictions 
or not, or whether he could find his way through a fog 
bank of doubt or uncertainty or not, or whether he 
would know the difference between an old truth and 
a new fallacy, and so he gets into the ministry. I 
wonder how many of them there are?” 









4 





4 * 

* • 


$ « 


• 







4 




I 


I 







CHAPTER XIX. 

When the Mail Man Came. 

B lessed is the mail man. He gives more than 
he receives, for we take letters from his hand 
with more eagerness than we send them away. 
He is a great institution. One morning he brought 
me two letters from Florida. The first was from Miss 
Kingsley, rather brief and matter of fact. She said 
that they would soon leave for the North, that Miss 
Searcy had gone the day before, because she wanted 
to return by way of Washington, to visit some friends, 
and see the Capital. She also said that her cousin 
had received a sad piece of news before she left, that 
the husband of the young married woman, whom “you 
called the lady of the interview,” caught a cold in a 
sleeping car on the return trip to Chicago; that it 
developed into an attack of pneumonia, and he died 
a few days after reaching home. Then she added that 
her cousin had discovered something from the lady re- 
garding the unfortunate incident at Palm Beach in 
which Mr. Dinsmore was involved. But she did not 
go into details, and just what it was she did not know. 

The other letter was from Mrs. Bamby, who said: 
“I am writing to ask a favor; I want you to write 
Bob a letter. He thinks he has got religion, and I 
think so sometimes, and then again I don’t. The 
other day one of them dudes who come down here 
with more good clothes than good sense was blowing 
up Florida, and Bob said to him: Tf you don’t like 
157 


158 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


Florida, why do you come down here with your 
pockets bulging out with money?' ‘To keep you 
wretches from starving,' the young fellow snapped 
back.' 

“Then Bob said: ‘You wasp-waisted, spindle- 
shanked concern, you don’t look as if you had eat a 
good square meal in a year. Try on my belt.' The 
young fellow took the belt and hit Bob a whack over 
the shoulder with it. Bob started for him, but I got 
hold of his coat tail and held on, and Bob didn't pull 
very hard, and the young fellow backed up until he 
fell off the step. Then we both laughed, and the fuss 
was over with. But I told Bob that he had forgot 
the Sermon on the Mount. He said he didn't recol- 
lect that you ever preached a sermon on the mount, 
and anyhow a man's religion didn't prevent him from 
defending his country, and he lived in Florida. I told 
him that he didn't understand these knockers, that 
when they are down here they knock Florida, and that 
when they are up there they whoop up Florida and 
knock that place. It's in them. ‘What if it is,' Bob 
said, ‘I'd like to knock some of it out of them.’ 

“But he don't have many bad spells. He works 
pretty hard at his religion, and I want you to write 
him a letter and brace him up. It will make him 
walk on air all day if he gets a letter from you. He 
talks about you every evening, about you and Miss 
Ethel. Bob thinks you two would make the greatest 
couple that ever held down a parsonage, that she 
has lots of religion in her own right, and that you 
have a good deal of religion which you get out of 
books, and between you there would be enough to 
keep the banks of Jordan full all the time. I think 
so too, but I tell him that it will never be, that Miss 
Ethel would die for her religion, and that your kind 
of religion is not her kind, but another patent. But 


WHEN THE MAIL MAN CAME 


159 


he says that when a girl is dead in love she can't do 
any more dying for her religion or anything else. And 
Bob says he knows that Ethel is in love, for he saw a 
little blush on her cheek one day when he was coming 
out of the house and she was coming up the steps 
looking back over her shoulder at the young parson 
going away. 

‘‘Blush nothing,” I said, “It was a little sunburn 
which she got on her cheek when they were out rid- 
ing. It stayed on two days, and blushes don't hang 
on two days. They come and go. I used to have 
them and I know. ‘You bet you had them,' said 
Bob, ‘when I used to say, may I see you home to- 
night.' 

“ ‘I know whom Miss Ethel is going to marry, I 
said, but I won't tell you. ‘I’ll lay awake at night,' 
said Bob, ‘and listen to you talk in your sleep. No 
woman can keep a secret like that all day and all 
night. It would bring on a spell of sickness if she 
tried it.' 

“Well, if you will not bother me any more about 
that secret, I said, I will tell you another one.'' 

“What secret?'' he asked. 

“About Ethel's cousin Susie, and Mr. Dinsmore. 
They are going to be married some day.'' 

“That is no secret,” said Bob. “I heard them fix- 
ing it up on the river bank the night he left. They 
didn’t know that I was so near, and I would have 
run away but I was afraid they would hear me and 
it would break up the meetin’.” 

“Excuse me for saying all this to you, but I wanted 
you to think my letter interesting. Now write to 
Bob, sure. 

“In grateful remembrance for what you are going 
to do. 


“Mrs. Lucy Bamby.” 


160 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


While I am in my mail bag I may as well hand out 
a letter which I received from Miss Searcy, written at 
Washington. She wrote: 

find Washington a charming city and of con- 
centrated interest. The past is so much in evidence, 
the present so much in the public eye. Great men 
of other days still remain in monuments, statues, on 
foot and on horseback, in the circles, at street cor- 
ners, in the parks, in the Capitol. They are the 
prominent people of the place, here to stay and to 
speak long after our clamoring voices have been stilled 
in the silence which covers common humanity. I like 
to look at them; they make the past more real and 
life more inspiring. It is good to look at that grand 
monument of the man who could not tell a lie when 
you have so many people around you who cannot 
tell the truth. It is good to see Franklin with his 
long hair hanging over his shoulders, handing out 
wisdom to men who have so little hair. And I have 
stopped more than once to gaze into the face of the 
great Webster or to look at the handsome Hamilton. 
How deep down they could get, and how far forward 
they could look. Webster got up early in the morn- 
ing; Washingtonians get up late. Hamilton looked 
into the years and reckoned with the strain and wear 
and tear of time; the Washington crowd watches the 
clock for quitting time. 

‘‘Pennsylvania Avenue is petering out in a business 
way, but it fascinates me. I think of it as the Ameri- 
can Appian Way. For up this avenue come our con- 
quering heroes with millions of captive voters in their 
train. No Caesar or Scipio ever led such a train of 
captives up the famous Roman road as come wriggling 
and kicking after these men who are making for the 
White House gate. It is wonderful how it can be 
done on such a grand, multitudinous scale every four 


WHEN THE MAIL MAN CAME 


161 


years in such peace and quietness. Caesar^s wife 
feared the ides of March; our fourth of March pre- 
sents the most wonderful spectacle the sun looks down 
upon. Therefore I say that the avenue fascinates me. 

“The Capitol is a magnificent pile of masonry, 
which shelters that peculiar body called the American 
Congress. It is hard to catch the members of either 
House in their seats. The more often I see its empty 
chambers the more I think that our Congress must 
make laws by absent treatment. One day I actually 
caught some ten or a dozen Democratic Senators in 
their seats, and at least two of them were giving their 
attention to the remarks of some Republican Sena- 
tors who seemed to have been seized with a spasm of 
interest in the conduct of the administration. 

“The Supreme Court solemnizes me. The door- 
keepers start the feeling that you are approaching the 
day of judgment, and the row of black-gowned solem- 
nities reduce you to utter humility. It is a relief, 
however, to look at the big Chief Justice; he is so 
brainy. Then as my eyes wander around the row 
and I see the aged faces of some of the men, I won- 
der if they ever quit or die. I also wonder if any one 
of them could make a will which the others could not 
break. 

“In the Hall of Fame, or Statuary Hall, as they 
call it, is a circle of immortals, done in marble, because 
of what they did in the common mud of American 
politics. But there are a few exceptions, I mean not 
politicians, and the most notable is a woman, Frances 
Willard. The dear old girl! How I admire her for 
breaking into the line and standing up to be counted 
with America’s great. But it is my private opinion 
that when women come into their own and have a 
bigger hand in things around the Capitol some of 
those old fellows will get turned out and women will 


162 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


be put into their places. Or else the women will 
build an annex to the Hall of Fame and have a room 
of American beauties all their own. 

stand and look at these people who have been 
turned into faultless, flawless marble and wonder 
whether that is not where our dream of immortality 
takes its start. When men who have risen above 
their fellow men die, we idealize their characters and 
immortalize their names. The people in Washing- 
ton’s day thought that he had faults and some freckles 
on his face. He has none now. Lincoln told stories 
to half a dozen men around a rickety stove in a 
rickety old hotel, and some of the half dozen yawned 
and some laughed. Now all the world laughs at all 
the stories he ever told and a lot more stories which 
he didn’t tell. Grant’s neighbors thought he had a 
wart on his face, but nobody dares to think so now. 
It takes death and time to make men very great. 
While they live here they look up at the clouds like 
the rest of us, and the rain falls on them and the dust 
blows into their eyes ; but when they have been dead 
long enough they stand with their heads among the 
stars and look down on everything. 

“‘But what about the rest of us?’ you ask. Ah, 
there’s the rub. We crave immortality, that is cer- 
tain ; and perhaps because of that we make a wonder- 
ful city and a wonderful temple for ourselves in an- 
other world. We cannot stand at the head of the 
avenues in bronze or granite after we are dead, so we 
fondly picture ourselves walking streets of gold in a 
beautiful city in another world. We cannot get into 
a Hall of Fame here, so we make a hall of fame for 
ourselves over there. Is it all a mistake, an empty 
dream, a fiction on which we feed our vanity? How 
it troubles me. What if there is nothing but this life, 
and it should prove a disappointment to me? And 


WHEN THE MAIL MAN CAME 


163 


what if my life should go before I am ready to have 
it go, like a flower plucked in the bloom and freshness 
of the morning! Yes, it troubles me sometimes. 

“And how I dislike the chill and emptiness which 
death makes. We went down to Mount Vernon one 
day, and we found it one of the most beautiful spots 
that a man ever chose for a home, with the great 
sweep of the river below and the green fields and the 
hills beyond. But what a chill of death is there! 
Everything is just as it used to be, but the people 
who made it worth while are not there. Everything 
is so empty. Oh so empty of the living! The chairs 
are in the parlor, but no one sits on them; the beds 
are in the chambers, but nobody sleeps in them; the 
dining table is there, but nobody eats; the kitchen is 
all furnished for roasting deer and wild ducks and 
turkeys, but nobody cooks or rings the dinner bell. 
In a word, it is a case of the dead keeping house. It 
made me shiver; everything was so silent and deathly 
and ghostlike — barns, stables, sheds, cattle-pens, all 
empty. I wanted to sit in the sun awhile and get 
warmed up. 

“We went over to Arlington and walked through 
the halls of the old Lee mansion. How attractive the 
big white house looks standing among the green trees, 
facing the smooth waters of the Potomac! But the 
Robert E. Lee who came and went is only a memory. 
Heroes are gathered thick on the green hill which 
slopes down to the river, but they are in their graves. 
Back of the mansion is an army of Union soldiers, 
stretching away through the trees as far as the eye 
can see, but they fight not, fire not, neither speak nor 
do, but just sleep on and on in their little ‘windowless 
palaces of rest.’ 

“It troubles me, I say. When I came out of col- 
lege I thought I had dismissed all religious questions. 


164 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


but they won’t stay dismissed. There will be long- 
ings, and there will be misgivings. Really in spite 
of my doubts I do not wonder that people sing those 
grand old hymns which will never die, which take 
us up to the Rock of Ages. They ought to live for 
the good they do to trembling humanity,” 

Miss Searcy’s letter was just what I needed, for on 
that day we were to follow the dear old Pastor Emeri- 
tus to the grave, and I went to the preparation of my 
words to the people with the pathos of her question- 
ing and yearning in mind. She seemed like a leaf 
on a tree top trembling in the wind. The departed 
saint seemed like one who had lived in a house built 
upon a Rock and who stepped from the door of his 
earthly abode to the house of many mansions. The 
contrast helped me and the people were very much 
moved when I spoke of their pastor’s great faith and 
steadfast hope. 

But any words which I could speak to them were 
weak compared to the message his life had been to 
them, and I was deeply moved by the tribute of 
their tears as they passed by to take a last look at the 
face which had so long been dear to them. Women 
sobbed and strong men shook with grief. It was an 
hour which seemed to compensate a life of steadfast 
purpose and unceasing devotion. Husbands and 
wives were there who had once been near the part- 
ing of the ways, but the wise counsel of the lips now 
silent and the loving entreaty of a great heart had 
dispelled the cloud and again sealed the golden bond. 
A man lingered and looked at the dead face again and 
again. I knew his story; how some years back he 
had been a coach driver, profane and abusive, and 
how the old pastor leaned across the wheel of the 
coach one day and coaxed the man into a promise to 
come to church ; and how he kept coming until he was 


WHEN THE MAIL MAN CAME 


165 


converted, and now he was one of the solid business 
men of the church. 

Then came a woman supported by one son and 
followed by two others. I also knew their history. 
I knew that each one of the young men had returned 
from college a skeptic, that the distressed mother had 
gone to the pastor and told her story in tears, that 
they had prayed together, and then like a good shep- 
herd he sought the straying sheep of her little flock 
and never wearying through days and weeks and 
months he restored them to their mother’s God. How 
the young men were moved as they stood beside the 
coffln! And what mingled gratitude and sorrow was 
in the mother’s heart. Precious tears ! I said to my- 
self, which go with a man of God to his home on 
high! They are like the incense upon the golden 
altar. 

‘‘He made a great impression upon his people,” I 
said to one of our deacons as we rode together to the 
grave. 

“He was not eloquent when he came among us,” 
replied the deacon, “but we soon saw that he was try- 
ing to give us the mind of God, the message of Him 
who spake as never man spake, and our hearts 
answered as they never can answer to eloquence alone. 
We learned to sit at his feet like little children.” 

I said to myself, “O my soul, try to be like him, 
try to be like him.” 


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CHAPTER XX. 

She Read Huxley and Was Moved to Remark. 

A fter Miss Kingsley returned to the North she 
sent me some remarks which she had been 
moved to make on Huxley. 

‘T heard a sermon/* she said, ‘‘in which scientists 
were arrayed against orthodoxy in a way to make old- 
timers feel that they were traveling on the wrong 
road or falling sadly behind the procession. So I 
went to the library and brought home a little armful 
of Huxley’s volumes and had an interesting time with 
him, for you know what a master of English the pro- 
fessor was, and how clever in an argument. He could 
be awfully smart and at times frank enough to make 
admissions which upset much that he had said on the 
other side. 

“In the sermon the minister began with a criticism 
of the old-time view of prayer. He said that the law 
and order of nature could not be changed and that it 
was not worth while to ask God to do things, although 
it might be good exercise for our spiritual faculties 
because of the retro-active effect upon ourselves. So 
I turned to some of Professor Huxley’s remarks on 
the subject and found him saying: 

Nobody can presume to say what the order 
of nature must be. It is this weighty considera- 
tion which knocks the bottom out of the apriori 
objections to prayer. No one is entitled to say 
that prayer for some change in the ordinary 
course of nature cannot avail. The belief in the 

167 


168 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


efficiency of prayer depends upon the assump- 
tion that there is somebody somewhere who is 
strong enough to deal with the earth and its 
contents as men deal with the events and things 
which they are strong enough to modify and 
control, and who are capable of being moved by 
appeals such as men make to one another. 

‘^Now that is just the way I always have felt about 
prayer. What is the use of talking so much about the 
Fatherhood of God if He cannot do anything for us? 
Fathers help their sons through college and then the 
sons come out of college declaring that God the Father 
cannot help anybody through the world. It is enough 
to make a pious father tired. Mothers go into an 
upper room and pray for their boys away at school and 
then the boys come home and laugh at a mother 
across the table as if she were some poor benighted 
soul groping along a dreary path through a field of 
weeds. They are repeating the professors or the col- 
lege preachers, and the professors are repeating some 
of the teachings of the skeptical scientists. And none 
of them knows what he is talking about, if we can be- 
lieve Huxley’s declaration that nobody can presume to 
say what the order of nature must be. The mother’s 
spiritual instincts are better than the presumptions of 
the professors, and the boy is safer in the hands of 
his mother, whether she gets down on her knees for 
him or takes him across her knee, than in the hands 
of the people who are trying to put prayer on the 
shelf. 

'The preacher’s next attack was upon the doctrine 
of Divine wrath against sin and of course he gave 
Jonathan Edwards a piece of his mind. 

"Poor old Brother Jonathan! I said to myself; he 
preached a sermon on sinners in the hands of an angry 
God, and he has been in the hands of a lot of angry 
sinners ever since. 


SHE READ HUXLEY 


169 


‘'Now, betwen you and me, I think that if Edwards 
had shown that sermon to his wife the night before he 
preached it she would have told him to set it out on 
the back porch and let it cool off. For a sermon on 
wrath against sin can be preached without setting the 
meeting house on fire. But the student of philosophy 
who does not know that Jonathan Edwards was one of 
the greatest intellectual giants this country ever pro- 
duced does not know much. He is one of the very 
few American thinkers whom the European schools 
recognize. And what I want to say is, that Huxley 
declares that Edwards' work, ‘On the Will’ was ‘never 
equaled in power and that it was irrefutable.’ 

“But of course the principal attack made by the 
sermon on orthodoxy was directed against belief in 
miracles. Miracles worry liberal preachers, because, 
in the language of Scripture, they are great works, and 
liberals do not want religion to be guilty of too much 
great work. So I lingered with Huxley on miracles. 
The upshot of what he said was this, I give his words : 

When it is rightly stated, the agnostic’s (the 
man who admits he does not know) view of 
miracles is unassailable. But the apriori assump- 
tion of impossibility is not justified because it 
involves the question in dispute. 

“This is sufficiently clear and emphatic. There is 
no such thing as an impossibility of miracles. It is 
an assumption, a begging of the question. 

“Nevertheless Huxley himself found it difficult to 
keep out of that trap when he got on the war path 
against miracles, because the argument is handy, and 
other arguments are difficult to handle in the case of 
the New Testament miracles without undermining the 
authority of the Gospels in everything else. The 
miracle at Gadara was Huxley’s especial aversion. He 


170 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


was a terror when he came to Gadara. His discus- 
sion of the subject with Gladstone was more of a joy 
to Huxley than it was to the Grand Old Man. 

**But the pugilistic professor lived before the doc- 
tors had made such remarkable discovery of physical 
possession, of germs, bacteria, bacilli, and the other 
little devils of disease which possess the human body. 
Now it is all possession. They keep us scared all 
the time. The evil possessors are in the water, in the 
food, in a kiss. They fight battles in us, the little red 
devils and the old white devils They have their Na- 
poleons and their Wellingtons, their Waterloos and 
their Pharsalias. It is killing to the people who fur- 
nish the fields of battle. The doctors do not look for 
disease as they once did. They look for the little 
things which start the disease. If a patient has the 
hookworm they don’t stop when they have found the 
worm, they look for the germ or little devil in the 
worm. Nothing is really found out about a malady 
or an epidemic until they catch the little devils that 
cause the trouble at their tricks. 

“The Master sent the evil spirits into the swine. 
The experts do the same thing. They put the wicked 
little imps into a rabbit’s blood or guinea pig’s blood 
to see how they work. The Great Physician sent the 
evil things into Gadara pigs ; the expert physicians put 
them into guinea pigs. It is just a little difference in 
pigs. The difference certainly is not so great that 
religious believers need to stumble over it or that Hux- 
ley could have made a handle of it if he had lived 
long enough to know more. The world is learning 
many things as it goes wabbling along, and one of the 
things which agnostics may yet discover is that the 
moral system of man can be possessed by evil actors 
as well as his physical system. 


SHE READ HUXLEY 


171 


‘‘In one of the Gospel incidents the evil spirit 
said that his name was Legion, and that is what the 
experts are saying now about the evil possessory. 
There are millions of them, and then many more mil- 
lions. The scholastics discussed the question as to 
how many of the smaller devils could stand on the 
point of a needle. The experts of the medical schools 
think that they can put a million of their little devils 
on the point of a penknife. 

“What is the use of denying the devil in theology 
when he is precisely what they are trying to find in 
medical science? If the evil tribe have a part in 
disease why can^t they have a part in sin? Just listen 
to this from Huxley: 

He who rejects the demon theology of the 
Gospels rejects the revelation of the spiritual 
world made by them as much as if he denied 
the existence of such a person as Jesus Christ. 
Without the theory of the influence of wicked 
and malign beings governed and ordered by a 
supreme devil, the antithesis of the Supreme 
God, the theory of salvation by the Messiah 
falls to the ground. 

“This is pretty explicit, and it is Huxley, and Hux- 
ley is dear to the heart of liberal preachers. 

“Next I looked to see what the brilliant professor 
had to say about an alarming hereafter, against which 
some of the modern preachers declaim so robustly and 
so scornfully. It would take a pretty old-fashioned 
preacher to put it as strongly as Huxley does, especi- 
ally as strong as the following : 

It is conceivable that man and all the higher 
forms of life should be destroyed utterly, and the 
earth become a scene of horror which even the 
lurid fancy of the writer of the Apocalypse 
would fail to portray. And yet to the eyes of 
science there would be no more disorder here 


172 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


than in the peace of a summer sea. Not a link 
in the chain of natural cause and effect would be 
broken. 

“What would throw a liberal preacher into hys- 
terics does not ruffle a hair of a scientist’s head. Hav- 
ing started our planet in a fire mist he is prepared to 
see it go out in a conflagration. It would be as much 
in the order of nature as a summer sea. 

“Don’t talk to me about everlasting punishment,” 
exclaimed the preacher. But Huxley says, ‘Bishop 
Butler’s argument, that inasmuch as there are re- 
wards and punishments in this life, they must be con- 
sistent with the attributes of Deity and therefore go 
on as long as the human mind endures, is unanswer- 
able.’ 

“Certainly it is not answered by heated declama- 
tion. The answer to all objections of stubborn 
hearted sinners or liberal minded preachers to the 
punishment of sin is the offer of a free and glorious 
salvation through Jesus Christ. 

“The mention of natural depravity has a most dis- 
turbing and painful effect upon some progressive 
preachers who bow with alacrity to the authority of 
the scientists, and yet Huxley says: ' 

I know of no study which is so unutterably 
saddening as that of the evolution of humanity 
as it is set forth in the annals cf history. Out 
of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges 
with the marks of his lowly origin upon him. 

He is a brute, only more intelligent than the 
other brutes. 

That is, the great scientist did not get any relief 
by thinking that man fell upward instead of down- 
ward. It was all extremely saddening to him. Which 
is another proof that much of the relief that progres- 


SHE READ HUXLEY 


173 


sives think they have brought to the human mind is 
like a sick man’s turning over in bed and groaning 
across to the other side of the room. Really, Hux- 
ley found a more painful line of inherited depravity 
in evolution than is found in ordinary theology. 

‘‘Now consider another fact. Huxley took a very 
gloomy view of the future of the human race if left 
to evolution alone. In speaking of the increase of 
population as accelerated by the discoveries and 
progress of science he said it would intensify the awful 
struggle for existence, which in turn would destroy 
our civilization, if Christianity did not help science to 
keep men together. 

“Therefore I am not worrying over the alleged 
conflict between science and religion. For in the 
long run science cannot do without the help of re- 
ligion. And anyhow, what is more scientific than the 
Christian religion? 

“We hear a good deal in these days about the con- 
clusions of scholarship but Professor Huxley purses 
up his lip and remarks that ‘human nature is not 
altered by seating it in a professor’s chair,’ even of 
theology. Then like a boy throwing stones at a win- 
dow he remarks that metaphysicians as a rule are 
deficient in humor, or they would refrain from advo- 
cating propositions which, stripped of their verbiage, 
appear to the common eye to be bare shams, naked 
but not ashamed. (Ha, ha, ha.) 

“In spite of all his lashing of the Bible he was com- 
pelled to recognize its greatness. ‘The Bible,’ he 
says, ‘has been the Magna Charta of the poor and the 
oppressed. Assuredly the Bible talks no trash about 
the rights of man. So far as equality, liberty, and 
fraternity are included under democracy, the Bible is 
the most democratic book in the world.’ 

“What else could he say? 


174 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“I shall close my references to the distinguished 
professor with one of his saucy observations : 'So far 
as my experience goes, men of science are neither bet- 
ter nor worse than other men. They have their full 
share of original sin. Need, greed, and vain glory, 
beset us as they do other men.’ 

"Scientists are not infallible, and we are all poor 
critters.” 

"Good bye to Huxley, and a good wish for you.” 

"Ethel K.” 

"O. K.,” I wrote on the envelope as I laid the let- 
ter away for future reference. 


CHAPTER XXL 

The Problem of the Affections. 

I N May I went to Atlantic City for the fresh air 
of the sea and the tonic of the Presbyterian As- 
sembly which was gathered there. The men of 
that faith take to this famous resort. Perhaps they 
do so because it has the broadest board walk in the 
world, and just now some of them are becoming 
pretty broad; and perhaps it is because the sea is so 
inspiring, such a sign of the comprehensive, such an 
intimation of the Eternal. Jesus walked by the sea 
and spoke truth for all men and all times. When the 
Congregationalists finally concluded that they would 
like to gather the scattered parts of their faith into a 
national body or a denomination they went down to 
Plymouth Rock, took a long look at the sea, and then 
organized the National Council. They have felt bet- 
ter ever since and still have all the liberty that they 
know how to manage or is good for them. 

The sea also is instructive in another respect; it 
looks better when it is clear than when it is covered 
with a fog bank. So does theology. 

While I am not a Presbyterian, I like to see the 
brethren of that fold in a discussion; and they are 
always discussing something big, some fateful issue. 
An Assembly is an Atlas with a world on its shoulders. 
They have their bold, uncompromising men, and also 
their experts at side stepping, or putting something 
175 


176 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


over when the other man is not entirely aware of what 
is going on. 

Knowing how to do it as well as how not to do it, 
they have made conspicuous history. They are a 
study in how to advance and not leave anything be- 
hind, how to stand and yet to move. Believing in pre- 
destination, they do all they can to help it succeed. 
Sure of election, they take off their coats and hustle 
to carry the election. Believing in the perseverance 
of the saints, they spare no pains to reinforce the per- 
severance. Knowing that the Lord will do things, 
they get up early and stay up late to see that they 
are done. Their assurance is great that no heavenly 
purpose can fail with the Presbyterians lined up for 
it. 

I say they are a magnificent people with brainy 
preachers, learned teachers and solid laymen. There- 
fore I like to sit and look at them and listen to them 
while they are discussing the universe and shaping 
the destinies of the human race. And of course they 
do not talk about the damnation of infants. That is 
one of the misrepresentations of the people who never 
can see straight when looking at anything religious. 
Nobody discusses infant damnation now but the 
physicians and the eugenic experts, and they discuss 
it much — the damnation of infants by fathers of 
tainted blood who send the blight down to the third 
and fourth generation. It is another illustration of 
the principle which runs through what the world calls 
troublesome doctrines of theology. We no sooner 
get a kink out of theology than it turns up again in the 
hard realism of life. Horace Greeley was understood 
to be a Universalist, but in a fit of exasperation one 
day he exclaimed, ‘‘There don^t half enough people go 
to hell.*’ And another liberal came up from the front 
during the Civil War declaring that hell was a mili- 


THE PROBLEM OF THE AFFECTIONS 


177 


tary necessity. In fact, human nature is such an aston- 
ishing proposition that nothing seems too good or too 
bad to fail of an illustration in its action and reaction, 
its ins and outs, and ups and downs, sooner or later. 

But I fear that I am rather slow in reaching the 
story which developed at Atlantic City, and which 
sent me home in a disturbed and distressed state of 
mind. 

The story follows: 

Miss Searcy's father was one of the lay delegates at 
the Assembly, and she had come with him. Another 
woman also had come to the city, the mother of the 
ex-engaged young man. She was not a Presbyterian, 
but was from Boston. No delegate in the Assembly 
was there with such a determination to bring some- 
thing to pass as this woman. She had been greatly 
disturbed when Susie Searcy seceded from the engage- 
ment. Her heart was set upon the match, for she 
liked the girl, and was vain enough to want to hear 
her friends say, ‘‘What a beautiful wife your son has." 

Moreover she fancied herself something of a gen- 
eral with young people, and she also had a feeling that 
the spirit of gladness in the laughing throng on the 
great walk and the spell of the sparkling waters of the 
sea might soften the estranged heart. Therefore when 
she learned that Miss Searcy was to be at Atlantic 
City she persuaded her son that he needed a rest and 
salt air, and together they came to the famous resort. 

The good woman soon got in touch with her sub- 
ject or object and worked hard, with the skill of a 
flatterer and an adept. And she made an impression 
— art counts for something, but she did not carry the 
works. Then a new plan occurred to her. Miss 
Searcy had a classmate in Philadelphia, a mutual ac- 
quaintance, quite charming and fully capable of fur-, 
thering an attack upon her friend’s susceptibility. The 


178 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


fond mother telephoned to her to come down, and she 
came the next day. She was a Miss Willingford, and 
I remembered having seen her somewhere. The 
mother and Miss Willingford held a war council at 
once and began to plan a campaign against the breast- 
works which defended the stubborn heart. But before 
setting forth the mother thought they ought to call in 
the son and prime him for his part. Miss Willing- 
ford thought it would be a capital idea, and she pre- 
pared to do her part with effect. She came for the 
rehearsal arrayed like a lily of the field. The mother 
exclaimed, ‘T never saw you look so well,” and added, 
‘‘I think the two of us ought to make an impression 
upon him and get him in line for events.” 

The two women were seated in the brilliantly 
lighted parlor when the young man came in. Then 
something unexpected happened. The two young peo- 
ple fell in love at first sight. Both were gone as com- 
pletely as if a steel trap' had snapped shut on them. 
There was no sitting down to think it out, to pass 
ideals in review, or take the measure of future possi- 
bilities. The fates were at hand, and they knew it 
and surrendered at once. 

The mother retired early, they did not. After that 
they were inseparable on the big walk. How much 
his wheel chairs cost him I cannot say, but they found 
them a constant convenience. He immediately put a 
diamond ring on her finger, to flash a warning to any 
other young man who might be headed her way. 

The mother also capitulated and they all went 
home rejoicing. The campaign had succeeded beyond 
expectation. Did Miss Willingford have the scheme 
in mind when she answered the mother’s hurry up 
call? Susie Searcy intimated that she did. I don’t 
know, the problem of the affections is difficult. 

The wedding came off early in the fall. 


179 


THE PROBLEM OF THE AFFECTIONS 

Before leaving Atlantic City Miss Searcy told me 
that she had just received a letter from the Chicago 
lady regarding the unpleasant incident at Palm Beach, 
with the suggestion that it should be explained to me. 

“What did that woman have to do with it?” I 
asked. 

‘‘It was all about her,” she replied. 

“About her! That is news to me.” 

“Don’t you know that it was her husband who at- 
tacked Mr. Dinsmore?” 

“No.” 

“And I suppose you don’t know that the man at 
the resort about whom she talked so mysteriously was 
Mr. Dinsmore?” 

“No, and how do you know it?” 

“Because she told me so.” 

“I got up and went to the window, and wanted to 
kick a chair or something as I went. When I saw 
the waters slamming against the beach it came over 
me that the sea gets into stormy uproars to relieve its 
mind.” 

“Don’t take it so hard,” she said. 

“But why didn’t you tell me this at the resort?” 

“Because I did not think it necessary, and the lid 
was on then. There was no opening for an outburst 
of confidence. You were quite reserved about it your- 
self, as became your profession. Had Dinsmore never 
told you that he knew the lady?” 

“No.” 

“And you did not know it?” 

“No. It seems as if I did not know anything which 
I thought I knew. These affairs are too much for me. 
I don’t wonder that somebody wanted to know 
whether there would be marriages in heaven. He was 
scared. So am I.” 


180 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“You will get over it, and think that marriage is a 
gate to heaven here below. But let me go on with 
the explanation.” 

“Go ahead, but temper the wind to Dinsmore, for I 
always have liked him immensely.” 

“I shall make it very brief. There was a time 
when Mr. Dinsmore and the lady expected to live and 
die for one another, but they were separated by dis- 
tance and time ; and the other man was very aggress- 
ive and also had the help of her parents, and the result 
of it all was that they overpersuaded her and she mar- 
ried against her will and her heart. Neither of them 
were quite happy. He was jealous and there was a 
far-away look in her eyes.” 

“And so he tried to take it out of Dinsmore? Is 
that it?” 

“Yes, that is about it. If she had not been so 
determined to be loyal to her husband she would not 
have been so much disturbed by the situation at the 
resort. He is dead now, but justice to the living com- 
pels me to say that the attack at Palm Beach was 
quite wanton, and cruel to Mr. Dinsmore.” 

“It is some relief to hear you say so But I don’t 
understand Mr. Dinsmore’s explanation of the affair.” 

“He probably was rattled.” 

“Perhaps, a lot of people seem to be rattled.” 

“Everybody but you and me,” she said with a 
merry little laugh. “But you know,” she added, “I 
could not think of Mr. Dinsmore as other than a man 
who was the very soul of honor after he risked his 
life to save mine.” 

“How much of this did you know when you had 
that last interview with him?” 

“Enough to make me very cautious, — in fact, to 
cause me to feel that what he proposed could not be.” 

As soon as I reached New York I asked Dinsmore 


THE PROBLEM OF THE AFFECTIONS 


181 


to come around for an interview. There must have 
been something peremptory in my request, for he came 
in with a dejected, found-out-look on his face. 

I said to him, ‘‘Don, I don’t want to doubt you until 
I am compelled to do it, but there has been something 
mysterious about that Palm Beach affair. You told 
me that it was connected with a business matter ; now 
it turns out that it was a case of an angry husband. 
Let us get down to brass tacks and have the exact 
facts.” 

“That is precisely what I want to do,” he replied 
in a more cheerful tone. “The first and fundamental 
fact is that when two people are really in love with 
one another it dies hard. That is what ailed us. But 
she was a woman with a conscience and a high sense 
of honor, and although she knew she had made a mis- 
take she was determined not to make it worse by being 
disloyal to her husband. And for my part I entirely 
dismissed her from my calculations when she married. 
You know that is easier for a man than it is for a 
woman.” 

“No, I don’t know anything about it, I don’t know 
anything that I ever did know about it. But go on 
and get to Palm Beach as soon as you can.” 

“Our meeting at your resort was accidental. If I 
had known she was there the winter could have frozen 
me stiff before I would have gone a step in that direc- 
tion. And so was the meeting at Palm Beach acci- 
dental. I did not know that she was there until Miss 
Searcy stopped in sudden surprise. Then I glanced 
across the flower bed and saw her. She did not know 
that I saw her. In order to avoid meeting them dur- 
ing the evening I went over to the beach. Unfortu- 
nately they had done the same thing in order to keep 
out of my way. 


182 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


‘‘The result was that we met. I was so embar- 
rassed that I tried to pass them on the same side that 
he was passing me, and we bumped into one another. 
Then he was mad, red hot, and turned loose. I tried 
to explain, but it was no use. She did the same thing, 
and it only made him madder. We had kept walking 
until we were on the pier. She was crying, and he 
was swearing like a pirate and saying every mean 
thing to me that he could think of. Finally I told him 
that if he did not slow down I would pitch him into 
the sea. He looked at me long enough to see that I 
was larger than he was and then walked away.” 

“And that is where you were when you disap- 
peared that night?” 

“Yes. In the morning I thought that he had prob- 
ably slept it off and got back to some sense. But he 
had not, and you saw what happened.” 

“But why did you tell me that his attack was con- 
nected with a business matter?” 

“That was a shifty explanation, and I never have 
felt right about it since. But there was a man at 
Palm Beach who had it in for me. I had exposed him 
in a dishonest business transaction, and he put the 
Chicago man whom he happened to know up to the 
assault in the morning. He stuffed him with a lot of 
lies and staged the attack. To that extent it was con- 
nected with a business matter. To make it worse, he 
had a reporter there to write it up and have it go to 
the press that Don Dinsmore of New York had been 
chastised by an angry husband. Fortunately another 
reporter gave me the tip, and finally I succeeded in 
keeping it out of the newspapers. You see what a 
fix I was in.” 

“I do.” 

“I hardly knew myself when I got out of Palm 
Beach. But I do know that I never gave that man 


THE PROBLEM OF THE AFFECTIONS 183 

any cause for his feeling or his attack, and I think I 
can say the same for the lady. I wish you would 
write to her and get her version of the matter for my 
sake.*' 

“I shall do so,*’ I replied, ‘‘and in the meantime go 
your way with all the good will of the past.” 

My letter was promptly answered and to this 
effect : that it was painful to discuss a matter in which 
a husband who could no longer speak for himself was 
involved, but that Mr. Dinsmore had been greatly 
wronged, that she herself was too much disturbed at 
the resort, and that the affair at Palm Beach was as 
lamentable as it was unjustifiable. ‘'Mr. Dinsmore 
was blameless then and always.” 

Something like a year and a half later the lady of 
the interview became Mrs. Dinsmore. 

In the meantime, a painful affair occurred in our 
church A family was broken up. The husband was 
a member of the church, but did not take his religion 
as much to heart as he did some other things. His 
father had been a successful merchant, and the family 
connections were aristocratic and influential. The 
wife also belonged to a prominent family, and perhaps 
had been married more for her wealth than for her 
personal attractions, although she was a most excel- 
lent woman. 

The man’s moral lapse was complete. The wife 
had seen it coming and protested. She wept many 
bitter tears as she saw the shadows settling down upon 
her happiness. Friends also tried to warn the man, 
but it had no effect. He was infatuated. 

The officials of the church held two or three meet- 
ings regarding the matter. One of these conferences 
was prolonged to a late hour. I had said that if this 
were a single case the problem would be easier. “We 
have dealt with the man,” I remarked, “but what are 


184 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


we going to do with the conditions which this and so 
many other cases reveal?'' 

am glad," said an elder, a prominent and suc- 
cessful business man himself, ‘'that the pastor has 
asked this question. Of course, when a member of 
the church goes so far astray we feel prompted to take 
him by the nape of the neck and throw him out. But 
we can't take the conditions which have crept into the 
business world by the collar and throw them out. 
They are here ; and while I do not want to be thought 
pessimistic, I know them to be full of moral peril. I 
knew a man in business for several years, and I neither 
knew nor suspected anything wrong with him ; but one 
morning on taking up the daily paper I was shocked 
by the startling headlines which announced that he 
had been killed in an auto accident at two o'clock in 
the morning, along with a companion, and the com- 
panion was not his wife. The daily papers are full of 
this kind of thing. It is the serial story running all 
the year round, ghastly, dreadful. A joy ride, a flood 
of tears. A fling for young men, broken hearts for 
fathers and mothers. 

‘T think sometimes," continued the elder, “that 
the devil must prize the automobile as the biggest 
thing that ever struck his road to ruin. He must rub 
his hands with delight when he sees a big auto com- 
ing down his way filled with young men who cannot 
be trusted outside of a penitentiary and young women 
whose mothers do not know where they are, or with a 
couple of husbands whose wives are wringing their 
hands because they do not come home and a couple of 
women whose ex-husbands would like to kill the men 
who wrecked their homes. 

“The pulpit may suppress or overlook the declara- 
tion that the wages of sin is death, but the newspapers 
neither suppress nor overlook it. That is what they 


THE PROBLEM OF THE AFFECTIONS 


185 


publish and keep publishing it as long as a shred of 
the sordid story can be made to hang together.” 

‘‘I feel as you do,” said another of the elders, '‘but 
what are we going to do? We have taken down the 
old barriers, we have removed many of the old land- 
marks and have displaced the Decalogue with soft 
words. America can build navies until our ships of 
war swarm on the coast, and we can erect fortresses 
until they line the hilltops, and yet we may be over- 
looking a far greater peril than that of any foreign 
invader in the conditions of the home, the factory and 
the counting room.” 

“Do you think the pulpit should do plainer preach- 
ing about it ?” I asked. 

“I do,” said the elder. “Anyhow I don’t like to 
see the pulpit wasting time on a monkey ancestry, and 
trying to lay the responsibility for the sins of our day 
on an animal inheritance. Monkeying with the sense 
of individual responsibility is serious business. It 
makes me apprehensive. You cannot collar monkeys 
which were swinging in the trees a thousand years 
ago. But you can collar some of these fast young 
men and bad old men who are hanging around places 
of opportunity to destroy young lives and damn hu- 
man souls. Let the pulpit preach damnation as long 
as men are practicing it. We hear philosophy until 
our heads ache. We are loaded down with science 
and evolution until our backs ache. My God! what 
we need is something which will stop the heartache 
of parents and hit the deviltry of men.” 

I thanked the brethren for their suggestion, and 
then we went out into the night to find our way home. 
I felt faint when I thought of what the night cov- 
ers, and I trembled as I thought of the superficial cures 
for the moral evil of the world which are pushed at us 
from every side. 


t 


CHAPTER XXII. 

How TO Reach the Preacher. 

I HAD an engagement to give an address at a min- 
isters' meeting on the topic “How to Reach the 
People." Just after going to the study to prepare 
for the address the janitor came with the announce- 
ment that a man wanted to see me. I told him that I 
could not be interrupted then, but would see the man 
at one o'clock, my hour for callers. He replied that 
the man had a troubled look on his face and seemed to 
want help. “What is he," I asked, “a tramp or a col- 
lege President?" 

“I don't think he is either," said the janitor, “but a 
betwixt and between." 

“That is where I shall be if I don't get this address 
ready," I replied, and the janitor closed the door. 

When he was gone I relented and hastened after 
him to tell him to bring the man in, but he was gone. 
I sat down and made another start, and then the tele- 
phone bell rang. Telephones have a peculiar habit of 
ringing when you don't want them to ring, and of 
keeping monotonously quiet when you are having a 
dull, stupid hour and wish that something would hap- 
pen. The call was from a man of the church, who 
said that a number of the members wanted to see me 
that evening. I told him that I had something else 
in hand for the evening and would consider it a favor 
if he selected some other time. The truth of it was, I 
had planned to attend a club meeting that evening and 
187 


188 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


expected to hear some smart after-dinner talks. But 
he seemed disappointed and was persistent, and finally 
I consented to the appointment. The result of that 
meeting will appear in another chapter. 

When I sat down again to go on with the prepara- 
tion of the address a thought came which jarred me. 
Here I am, I said to myself, getting ready to tell the 
ministers how to reach the people, and the people are 
having a tough time to reach me. I ought to turn the 
topic around and make it, “How to Reach the 
Preacher.” Then I began to think how we city pas- 
tors bar our study doors and hedge ourselves around, 
and how we are away giving addresses or chasing the 
Chautauqua courses or attending conferences to dis- 
cuss ways and means of reaching the masses. 

I also thought how we are educated until we are 
away from the common people; four years in high 
school, four years in college, three years in the theo- 
logical dispensary, and then perhaps a year or two in 
a post-graduate course, to muddle up or unlearn what 
we learned in the previous eleven years. And 
we study so many languages that the people cannot 
understand us in the one common language. I was at 
a national meeting of the denomination, where I had 
an engagement to write a review of the proceedings 
for a leading paper. In preparing copy I had occa- 
sion to use the services of two or three stenographers. 
They were bright, intelligent girls, but the big words 
which the brethren had used in their addresses proved 
an unknown tongue to the young women. They said 
that they could understand the words which business 
men used, but as for these doctors of divinity they 
could not always recognize their language. And the 
young women were a good average of the people in the 
pews. Are ministers really understood? A preacher 
rolls the word psychology, for example, from his 


HOW TO REACH THE PREACHER 


189 


tongue as if his people had all been brought up on psy- 
chology, as if they had it hot for dinner and cold for 
supper. But do all, or the majority, actually know 
what the preacher means by it? I remember that I 
was coming into the city from a suburban engagement 
one evening, and two young ladies in the seat behind 
me were talking about an address which they had just 
heard. They said the speaker had used the word 
pedagogy, and one asked the other what it meant. The 
young lady hesitated a moment and then replied, ‘Tt 
means some kind of a little dog, doesnt it?’' 

You may call this stupidity, if you want to; but all 
the same not a little of the language of some pulpits 
is out of the reach of the average man and woman. 
When we were little shavers we sometimes put a chair 
in the pantry and then got the big dictionary and laid 
it on the chair to reach mothers’ fresh batch of cookies. 
There are churches where the people need big diction- 
aries in the pews to reach up to the minister’s output 
of words. 

But the separation in language is only a small part 
of it. In his long course of education the minister is 
philosophized and theorized and theologized, until he 
becomes a man of abstractions, while th^ people are 
full of daily distractions. The difficulty is to set up 
mutual attraction between them. The people do not 
always know where the preacher “is at.” 

And yet the people want an educated minister. 
That was the bottom idea of the far-seeing Puritans 
and Pilgrims who started the public school system of 
America. It made a mountain range of education 
across the continent. Moreover, a minister cannot 
confine his preaching to the common level. If he gets 
above that level he begins to get away from the peo- 
ple. If he stays on the common level the people get 


190 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


away from him, because they do not think him worth 
while. So there you are. 

The knot which the preacher must untie is how to 
keep down and to keep up, how to walk in the dusty 
road with the crowd and to fly in the upper air, how 
to be the familiar with the common man and be the 
companion of scholars, sages, scientists, philosophers. 
It is something of an undertaking. 

Nor is this all. The preacher must explain. Of all 
men he is the most heavily taxed for explanation. 
And there is a good deal in the universe to explain. 
Moreover, there is never an explanation which does 
not call for another explanation. Ask a scientist why 
material bodies are drawn toward one another, why a 
stone thrown into air comes back to earth instead of 
going on into space in search of more fresh air, and 
he will tell you that it is drawn back by the force of 
gravity. Ask him what the force of gravity is and he 
will look out of the window or reply that it is an ulti- 
mate fact. The actual fact is that he does not know, 
and his ultimate fact is one of those conveniences of 
language which cover ignorance. 

Science itself is an endless search for causes. The 
scientist notes an effect, a phenomenon, he calls it, and 
he looks behind the effect for the cause. He finds the 
cause and proclaims his discovery. But the next day 
a dozen other scientists demand an explanation of his 
discovery. One thing he never does find, a resting 
place. Back of tissues are cells, back of cells are 
something else, something invisible. Back of the in- 
visible, what ? Who knows ? Investigation and expla- 
nation flap their weary wings in an airless, trackless, 
boundless unknown. It is the limit, and yet there is 
no limit. 

But even greater is the task laid upon the minister. 
For to material things are added moral and spiritual 


HOJV TO REACH THE PREACHER 


191 


things. If he cannot explain, he is not a deep preacher. 
If he tries to explain, scientists rush at him with horns 
on their heads and hoofs that trample him into the 
dust. If he compromises with the skeptics, they leave 
him in the middle of a desert. In a word, there is an 
everlasting push behind a minister to go where he 
cannot go, to lead where he cannot lead and where no 
one can follow. 

As I thought of these things I felt the hush of a 
baffled mind, the solitude of that loneliness where 
thought forsakes you. I sat staring at emptiness, 
humbled by the thought that I could tell neither how 
to reach the people nor how the preacher was to reach 
the resting place of knowledge. 

Then a voice seemed to speak. It said : 

“I have come from a far-away land and the long 
ago. I have looked into all space. I have crossed 
vast areas. I have felt the tingle and the throb of all 
forces. I have seen all the changes on earth or in the 
sky, all the storms which ever swept sea or land. I 
have looked upon all the generations which have 
passed down the banks of the river of time. I have 
seen all their struggles, known all their joys and sor- 
rows, counted all their tears, felt the horror of all the 
blood which has reddened the earth. I have heard all 
the cries of pain and all the shouts of victory. I have 
listened to all the eloquence of human tongue, all the 
ribald laughter of the scoffer. I have seen all the men 
who rose to fame, all the men who fell to shame. I 
have looked upon all the nations which flourished, all 
the nations which perished, all the cities which ruled 
the world, all the cities which sank to ruin and were 
covered by the sands of the desert. I have seen all 
their pleasure and all their madness. I have heard all 
the warnings of the seers and felt all the trembling 
of peoples smitten by fear. I have heard all the bold 


192 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


questions of the human mind and all the agonized ques- 
tions of the human heart. I have heard all the answers. 
But never have I heard an answer which answered all 
the questions. There always is a something beyond, 
a something which eye hath not seen nor ear heard 
nor heart conceived. I call it the fourth dimension. 
There is a dimension which eye sees, a dimension 
which ear senses, a dimension which heart perceives, 
but the fourth dimension is beyond reach.” 

“What is this fourth dimension?” I asked, with 
eager soul. 

“In vain you ask the question,” the voice replied. 

“Tell me,” I pleaded. 

But there was no voice. It had vanished. I was 
alone with silence and myself; I bowed my head and 
said to my soul, “What shall I do?” 

Then the voice spoke again and said, “Do the next 
thing, day by day, hour by hour.” 

It was enough. From that day to this I have tried 
to do the next thing. If it was to prepare a sermon, 
I prepared it. If it was to answer the call of the sick, 
I went to the bedside of pain. If it was to lead a lit- 
tle child, I led it. If it was to help unsteady feet 
across slippery places, I helped them. If it was to heal 
a human hurt, I tried to heal it. If it was to put my 
hand to a public movement, I did my little part. If it 
was to join a protest against the world of wrong, I 
gave my voice. If it was to applaud valiant service, I 
joined in the demonstration. If it was to learn a new 
lesson, I learned it. If it was to throw away an old 
error, I threw it away. 

And I tried to choose the better things instead of 
the inferior. I read the better book. I took the grain 
of wheat from the pile of chaff. If one man was slow 
of speech and sluggish of thought and another was 
swift as an eagle in the air, I listened to the eagle. If 


HOW TO REACH THE PREACHER 


193 


there was a man of theory and another man of per- 
formance, I kept my eye on the man who achieved. 
If I was passing between the weeds of the wayside 
and the flowers of a garden, I looked at the flowers. 
If a bird sang a beautiful song as the sun was setting, 
I stopped to listen to it. If an owl began to hoot in 
the deepening shadows of the wood I did not stay to 
hear it. I considered the heart which loved me more 
than the heart which hated me. I tried harder to find 
the good in men than the evil. I listened to the 
voices of the past and the appeals of the future ; but I 
remembered that in the field of action there is no 
yesterday, no tomorrow. Time is long, but today is 
the only time at hand. ‘‘Today, today!” cried the 
warning voice of Moses. “I must work while it is 
called day,” said the Master of us all. 

“Am I the happier for it all?” I need not ask, for 
we are here not so much to be happy as to be useful. 
And I know that I am the more useful for it. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

A Heart to Heart Talk. 

T he committee which had requested the inter- 
view came at the appointed hour. It consisted 
of three men and two women. One of the men 
had a born disposition to govern and had freely culti- 
vated it in his church life. Another was a disap- 
pointed man and not what the street calls a good loser. 
The third, while a steady-going, wheel-horse member, 
had a daughter whom he wanted in the choir; but the 
fact that she was not exactly a singer made it difficult 
to satisfy her ambition. If the choir had been larger 
she could have been stood in a row and looked at, but 
with a small choir voice counted for something. Of 
the women, one was known in the church as a rapid 
talker, especially in a case of preferring charges against 
somebody. The other was a faithful and pious soul, 
spoken of as the salt of the earth. I suspected that 
the manager of the little movement had put on three 
men in order to balance up with the aggressive sister. 

There was solemnity in their voices and the air was 
oppressive, and I felt that I was not in for a cheerful 
evening. The spokesman said they were there, not by 
any action of the church but as a self-appointed com- 
mittee, that they were becoming troubled by the ab- 
sence of young people from the services, and that they 
feared I was not drawing them. “We called you,’" he 
continued, “because we thought a young man would 
get hold of our young people, and naturally we feel a 
195 


196 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


little disappoinment that it is not so; and we have 
come in to have a quiet talk about it, a kind of heart- 
to-heart talk.” 

‘'That is right,” I said, “make it hearty.” But be- 
fore the man could go on the leading sister broke in. 
“I think,” she said, “that you could make your preach- 
ing more attractive. Why don’t you tell more stories 
or use more poetry or something that way?” 

I replied that, when a man was given only thirty 
minutes in which to discuss the affairs of the moral 
universe and the eternal destiny of mankind, he had to 
be a little careful about telling stories to entertain the 
crowd. And as for poetry, my mind did not work so 
well by memory as by invention, that when I was 
thinking I had to think, that I could not suddenly stop 
that part of my mental machinery and hook another 
part of it to the wings of Browning or Mrs. Browing 
or Tennyson, and go flying through the azure. “No 
doubt,” I added, “it is a limitation, but I am made that 
way.” 

“You don’t even quote Whittier,” said the sister. 

“No,” I replied, “but I hope he will forgive me ; he 
believed in a pretty liberal amount of forgiveness.” 

“Why don’t you refer to Ralph Waldo Emerson?” 
asked one of the men. 

“Probably because I have not reached the Emer- 
son stage. I am still muddling along with the Gos- 
pels and Paul and Peter and Moses. Emerson belongs 
more to the post-graduate course.” 

“I used to hear Henry Ward Beecher,” said the 
third man, “and he gave us wonderful illustrations. 
Couldn’t you do more of that?” 

“I have been taken for a Beecher but once,” I said, 
“and that was when I was traveling where nobody 
knew me.” 

“You seem to make too many digressions,” said 


A HEART TO HEART TALK 


197 


the aggressive sister. “Why don’t you follow your 
line closely?” 

I replied: “A bird follows a straight course, but 
it has to flap its wings on each side, and preaching is 
somewhat like it. The side flourishes make the breeze 
and produce the effect. But what is the use of talk- 
ing about such things? This affair is deeper, and we 
must get further back. You want a heart-to-heart 
talk; let us try to make it that.” 

Then I turned to the spokesman and said, “Your 
two boys do not come to church; that troubles you. 
Let me ask you. Do you insist on their coming to 
church ?” 

“No, I do not believe in making children go to 
church,” he replied. 

“You believe in making them wash their faces, 
comb their hair, put on some clean clothes on Sunday, 
go to school and do numerous things to establish 
good habits and prepare them for life, don’t you?” 

“Yes, I suppose I do, but my father used to make 
me go to church and I said then that I would never 
make a boy of mine go to church.” 

Then I turned to the other man and said, “Your 
boy has his own auto, doesn’t he?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And he starts off on a twenty or thirty mile run 
on Sunday morning?” 

“Yes, sometimes.” 

“And then you want me to chase after him and 
bring him back to church? Why don’t you tell him 
that he can’t go riding on Sunday?” 

“Oh, I don’t believe in interfering too much with 
boys,” he replied. 

“You employ a considerable number of young men 
in your establishment and if they began to go out in 


198 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the middle of the forenoon you would interfere with 
them, wouldn’t you?” 

'"I certainly would.” 

‘That is, you believe in a governor in your busi- 
ness house where you are making money, but not in 
your own house where you are making habits and 
character and the destiny of life. Your boy calls you 
the governor, doesn’t he?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then make good; be the governor.” 

He looked at the floor, and the other two men tit- 
tered. 

To the third man I said: “I remember when I 
preached a sermon to the young people shortly after 
my arrival you told me you thought I was pretty 
hard on them, that boys were boys and would have 
their fling. In fact, you gave me the impression that 
you expected them to sow their wild oats. Now you 
want me to go into the field which they have been 
sowing and reap a harvest of wheat. Don’t you think 
that is asking a good deal of a pastor, when we have 
that terrific word of Holy Writ, ‘Whatsoever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap’? He shall reap that, 
and the preacher cannot reap something else for him. 
Your boy is no exception.” 

When I turned to the ready talker she showed 
some signs of "trepidation. I said, “You have two 
daughters, fifteen and seventeen years of age?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And they take dancing lessons, and they are at 
dances sometimes until two o’clock Sunday morning, 
and they do not get up until about the time you are 
starting for church. Why don’t you have them rise 
earlier and get ready for church and come along with 
you?” 


A HEART TO HEART TALK 


199 


“Oh, they are tired/’ she replied with a stammer. 

“So am I, tired of trying to buck against that kind 
of thing in my leading families.” 

Then I turned to the other sister and member of 
the committee, a sweet-faced woman, with a little 
sprinkling of gray in her hair, a humble look, and 
some lines of sorrow. “What have you to say?” I 
asked her as gently as possible. 

She hesitated a moment, and then said, “Let us 
pray.” 

She knelt down, and the rest of us followed, though 
I heard the joints in the knees of the men creak when 
they tried to bend them in prayer. Well, that woman 
prayed. I have heard some of the most eloquent 
prayers ever delivered to an audience, and I have heard 
prayers watered with tears and choked with sobs, but 
I never heard a prayer which touched me as that 
prayer did. When she prayed for the young pastor I 
thought I was a child again, and that my mother had 
wrapped her arms around me and was carrying her 
tired little boy home. 

We rose from our knees with a subdued feeling all 
around. The unpleasant looks had disappeared, and 
we parted with the understanding that they would 
lend a hand, and I would lend my head and heart to a 
new effort to bring in the young people. 

For my subject the next Sunday morning I looked 
into the Bible to see what the kingdom of heaven is 
like with reference to young people. I found it in the 
parable of the Ten Virgins — “five were wise and five 
were foolish.” 

“It was half and half,” I said. “The foolishness at 
the present time may be less; it may be more. Cer- 
tainly there is enough of it. The kingdom of heaven 
is not to blame for it; the author of the parable was 
not to blame for it. It was a fact of life. It was 


200 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


what the kingdom of heaven confronted in the world. 
The problem and the difficulty are still with us. If 
all young people were wise the millennium would be 
with us before noon. But they are not all wise. Half 
of these maidens were what a blunt man of the world 
would call natural-born fools. It may be so now. 
There are others who become foolish by practice, still 
others by the way in which they are brought up, or by 
the books and magazines they read or the lecturers, 
preachers, or reformers whom they hear, preachers 
who think that wisdom was not discovered until the 
present generation was born and reformers who think 
that their fads are superior to fundamental principles 
and heaven-born instincts. Great are the advantages 
for the cultivation of folly ! It takes hold readily and 
runs along easily. Lincoln thought that some of the 
people could be fooled all the time and all of the peo- 
ple some of the time. Certainly a minister has a time 
of it with this fool business to keep the dust out of the 
eyes of the people who do not want to be fooled and 
to keep wisdom in the people who do want to be 
fooled. 

“But all things work logically, after a fashion, even 
foolishness. The parable describes the process. The 
foolish virgins took no oil with them. Being foolish, 
they were sure to make a mistake, to do the wrong 
thing at the right time. Nevertheless they thought 
they were as wise as the others until something hap- 
pened. It was the unexpected. The bridegroom de- 
layed his coming. That made an emergency for which 
they were not prepared. They did not have oil enough 
for it. They had not acquired the habit of preparing 
for emergencies. That was part of their foolishness. 
In the animal kingdom there is an instinct which pre- 
pares for emergencies. The beavers build a higher 
dam for an unusually severe winter. The squirrels 


A HEART TO HEART TALK 


201 


lay up a larger store of nuts. The birds fly further 
South. In human life there must be a wisdom which 
corresponds to the instinct of the animal kingdom. 
That is what the kingdom of heaven is like. 

man says, T was a church member and I worked 
at my religion until my partner, who was a leader in 
church affairs, cheated me in business, then I dropped 
the whole thing. I never have darkened a church 
door since.’ That man was not prepared for such an 
emergency. 

young woman was a Sunday-school teacher and 
active in every department of church life, but she 
married a worldly man as cold toward religion as he 
was warm toward the fast side of life. Then she 
dropped her church, her Sunday-school and all the 
rest of it. She was not prepared for that kind of an 
emergency. There was oil enough in her lamp to take 
her to the altar of marriage, but not to the altar of 
God with a worldly companion. Their name is legion. 
Their troubles and their tears are countless. Young 
woman, prepare for emergencies.. And so I say to all. 
Prepare for emengencies. For there never was a time 
in the world when there were so many emergencies as 
there are now. Civilization begets emergencies. You 
business men know all about that. Every spectator 
who looks at the men on the Board of Trade scream- 
ing at one another knows it. The Indian who lived 
the simple life occasionally had an emergency with a 
bear, but now you men in the market know that it is 
a daily business of bears to make emergencies. The 
world of trade is full of them. Politics is full of it. 
Social life is full of it. Private life has them. There 
can be no such thing as the wisdom of life without 
being prepared for emergencies. The Titanic was the 
‘last word in shipbuilding,’ but it was not prepared for 
an encounter with an iceberg; and at midnight there 


202 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


was a great cry, and the mighty ship went down. You 
never will turn your little lifeboat into so calm a sea 
that you will not need to be prepared for emergencies. 
My message to young people, my cry to young people 
is, ‘Prepare! Prepare!’ 

“They took oil in their lamps but not in their ves- 
sels. The clock ticked, the hours struck, and the oil 
burned. A startling picture of what is going on 
within ourselves. It is not alone that time is passing, 
that the days and years arc going, but something 
within ourselves is going, consuming, wearing out, 
ceasing to light our way or prompt us. I confess that 
it makes me tremble when I think of it. I hear the 
clock on the shelf ticking away my stay on earth. I 
listen, and I hear it ticking in the recesses of my soul, 
ticking away the very life of my life. Then I cry to 
God to keep that life within me alive. If that life 
goes I am only a smoldering torch, no light for myself, 
no light for others. The Psalmist said, ‘All my springs 
are in Thee. Oh friends, keep your hearts open to 
God, that He may fill them daily, hourly. 

“Then came the climax to the foolishness— -‘the 
door was shut.’ You and I have shuddered more than 
once as we read these words. There are those who 
refuse to accept them. They refuse to believe that 
the door is ever shut. They demand an open door 
through all eternity. But let us reason calmly about 
this matter. Let us look at facts as we see them in 
our own world, in the life which we are living here 
and now. I see a tramp coming down the road. A 
house is standing back among the trees. He turns in 
at the gate, but he does not try to enter at the front 
door. He knows it is shut. He goes to the back 
door. It is shut. A Bridget is there who will not 
have the ‘likes of him around.’ He ambles down to 
the neighboring town ; he looks wistfully at the saloon. 


A HEART TO HEART TALK 


203 


but the door is shut. His money is gone, and the bar- 
keeper tells him to be gone. 

“He is not the only one. There is a young man 
who is looking for a position, but the doors are shut; 
he has a bad record. A distinguished senator brought 
a beautiful wife to the Capital, but the doors of society 
were shut. I need not tell you why. A politician 
wants to return to Congress, but the door is shut ; he 
betrayed his constituents. A teacher wants a better 
place in a better school, but the door is shut; he has 
not made good. A minister wants a larger field, a 
larger church, and he sees Providence pointing to a 
vacant pulpit, but the door is shut. He has been giv- 
ing five days in the week to miscellaneous distraction 
and one day to preparation for the all-important hour 
when listening ears are waiting to hear him speak, 
playing jack-of-all-trades to the community instead of 
jacking up the meeting house ; and in his hour of long- 
ing the door of the larger church is shut. 

“It is so here, it can be so there. The way on 

earth and the way to heaven are not so unlike that we 

can close doors here with our foolishness, our mis- 
takes, and our weakness, and not close them there by 
our sins, our impenitence, our defiance of God’s laws 
and our haughty rejection of His way of salvation. 
The shut doors of this world fill it with tears and wail- 
ing. But sadder still is it to know that at the last day 

the doors to eternal safety and blessedness may be 

shut. All that the foolish virgins had done for the 
great occasion was lost when it came to the last mo- 
ment, because they had failed to do the necessary 
thing. It is in vain that we multiply the incidental 
things of religion, that we run here and there, that we 
organize and reorganize, and are excessively busy, if 
we ignore the fundamental thing, the life with God. 
There are experts who know everything about religion 


/ 


204 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


except the one most important thing. There are hum- 
ble souls who know little of the externals but much of 
soul values. A great scientist, I think it was Mivart, 
once made the remark that the humble woman sitting 
by the fireside communing in her soul with God knows 
more than' any of the rest of us.’* 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

A Minister’s Wife. 

D uring the summer vacation I received a letter 
from Miss Searcy which amused me. It was 
written from the seaside resort where the two 
families usually spent the hot months. Mrs. Kings- 
ley had invited my mother to make a prolonged visit 
with them, and my thoughts frequently turned in that 
direction. Miss Searcy’s letter is given below. 

“The Breakers.” 

“My dear Mr. Liddon: 

“We have a prominent lady here who is an invet- 
erate match-maker, and selecting wives for ministers is 
her specialty. She took a course in a ladies’ aid soci- 
ety — where they all know what a minister’s wife 
should be — and she feels away up in the art. If I 
myself were asked to find a minister’s wife I should 
want a leave of absence from earth and search the 
heavens, where everybody is supposed to be perfect. 
But this sister is immensely confident of her ability to 
do what angels might fear to tackle. She is smart, 
stylish, impressive and persuasive. 

“Well, it happens that a couple of young ministers 
are supplying pulpits near here, and both are unat- 
tached. One is a recent graduate from a school of 
religion and the other from a divinity school, if you 
understand the difference. They are talented, and 
know how to knot a white necktie and also how to 
hook a sermon to a fine passage from Ralph Waldo 

205 


206 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


Emerson or William Ellery Channing, when he is not 
too orthodox. The promoter is quite interested in the 
young men, and the other day she came over to get 
cousin Ethel and myself to help her in her campaign. 
‘You know the girls in the resort better than I do,' she 
said, ‘and you can bring some things to pass which I 
cannot.’ ” 

“All right,” we said, “get up a social function, invite 
all the available material, and we will be there to do 
our little part.” 

The promoter acted on the suggestion, and the 
function started off briskly. But it was a warm eve- 
ning and the young people kept slipping out to the 
porch or the lawn, until by and by Ethel and myself 
were left with the two young men on our hands. They 
had been shut up in a theological laboratory so long 
that it was hard work for them to talk anything but 
shop. After stumbling around a bit one of them tried 
to extract an opinion from Ethel on “up-to-date 
preaching.” But Ethel replied that there had been 
only one preacher in the world who could change its 
date, the one who cut time in two and made it B. C. 
and A. D. And she thought it would require a good 
deal of audacity to attempt now to change the date 
from A. D. to U. D. 

“But women change their minds,” said the other 
young man, “and now that the new woman is arriving 
perhaps a new day is at hand.” 

“I do not reason about it that way,” I said, when 
Ethel looked over my way. “Woman's habit of 
changing her mind was part of her subjection in the 
past.” 

“What do you mean by that?” asked the young 
man. 

“I mean this : a little boy makes up his mind to go 
fishing in the afternoon, but his father tells him to go 


A MINISTER'S WIFE 


207 


into the potato patch and hoe out the weeds. Then the 
little boy changes his mind. On a Saturday afternoon 
Napoleon intended to go to Brussels, but on Sunday 
evening he changed his mind, suddenly, riotously, and 
hurried back to Paris. The Iron Duke had overawed 
him, squelched him. 

“And so with woman. Through the ages of her 
subjection man ruled her with brute force and 
squelched her, if she happened to intend to go one way 
and he wanted her to go another way. Hence she 
frequently had to change her mind, and the result was 
that she formed the habit of changing her mind. But 
now that she is escaping from the subjection and com- 
ing to her own, she will not have to change her mind 
so often. But men will have to change their minds. 
Mind what I tell you, if you live ten or fifteen years 
longer you will see men change their minds so quickly 
and so often that they will hardly know what they 
thought the day before. It makes a woman laugh to 
see what a lot of politicians changed their minds about 
suffrage when the Western women began to climb the 
mountains with their victorious banner. The poli- 
tician waits to see what the voters think before he 
admits that he has a mind. An old senator would not 
say that a flock of sheep had been sheared on both 
sides because he could only see one side of them. It 
would be a weak little woman who couldn’t muster up 
more courage of opinion than that.” 

By this time the young men were warming up, for- 
getting shop, becoming human-like. 

“Now let me tell you something,” said the hand- 
somer of the two with vigor. “Young women will 
have to change their minds about extravagance or 
young men will not marry them; and don’t you for- 
get it.” 


208 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


‘‘I won't, but where have you been wandering to 
and fro on this mundane sphere of ours that you have 
not seen the young men picking the most extravagant 
dressers for wives? A lot of them won’t turn a cor- 
ner of an eye toward a plainly dressed girl. Look at 
my cousin there; she dresses plainly for her station, 
and she can’t get married to save her life.” 

The young men roared, and one of them looked as 
if he wanted to go right over and propose’ to her, but 
he was wise. 

“You have performed some marriages perhaps,” I 
went on, “and you know that Solomon in all his glory 
was not arrayed like the brides who come before a 
minister. Dress up, marry off, that is the way it goes. 
But the trouble is that men want women a hundred 
per cent dressed on a ten per cent allowance. They 
want a wife to look stunning, and are stunned stiff 
when the bills come in.” 

“How many hats do you think a woman should 
have in a year?” asked one of the young men ner- 
vously. 

“A dozen or fifteen, I should say, wouldn’t you, 
cousin?” 

“Oh, more than that; two dozen, I think.” 

The young men got right up and left so suddenly 
that they hardly stopped long enough at the door to 
say good-evening. 

We went home laughing, and had to tell the pro- 
moter that finding mates for ministers was not in our 
line. Soberly, I should say, that if anything belongs 
to the sphere of Providence it is that. There are such 
depths of devotion in a woman’s heart that I do not 
like to think of any meddling in the matter. 


The incident stirred up my mother, and she wrote 
me one of her solicitous letters. 


A MINISTER'S WIFE 


209 


“You are not safe, John,*’ she wrote. “I agree with 
the old politician who said there are too many things 
going on in these days, and trying to capture young 
ministers in matrimonial schemes is one of them. But 
I am beginning to think that your prolonged stay in 
Florida was not all for your health, nor for fishing, nor 
for the songs of the mocking birds. I suspect that a 
little bird was singing in your heart. Anyhow, I 
should not blame you if that was the case, for these 
two girls are very attractive. I think one of them was 
born to be a minister’s wife, and I remember now that 
your father used to think so when she was a little girl. 
He made quite a pet of her, and of course he was flat- 
tered when she remarked one day that she would 
rather listen to men talk than to women, because they 
know more. But she idolizes her mother, and that is 
a good sign. And there is another good sign which 
you would hardly suspect under the circumstances. 
She is a good cook. I asked Mrs. Kingsley the other 
day how it happened that Ethel learned to cook when 
there was so much help around. ‘She learned to cook 
when she was a little girl,’ replied her mother, ‘and we 
were too poor to hire help. I was ill for a couple of 
months and when I recovered I found that my little 
girl had become a pretty good cook. I asked her how 
she learned, and she said that she studied the cook 
book and kept her eye on her papa when he was eat- 
ing his dinner. 

“I tell you, John, that is the kind of a wife a min- 
ister wants, one who keeps her eye on him when he is 
eating. A minister ought to enjoy his food ; it makes 
him better natured. Spurgeon used to say that to be 
a real good pastor a minister should have a capacious 
stomach. I don’t draw the line at the stomach or 
measure a minister’s capacity for usefulness by his 
belt, but I do hold that the English idea of a man of 


210 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the house is right, namely : that inasmuch as he is the 
provider and the mainstay of the family he ought to 
be kept fit. And if a young minister has a chance to 
get a wife who could cook a good dinner or prepare a 
big sermon when he is sick or tired or lazy, he ought 
to jump at the opportunity. 

‘‘Don’t think that I am arguing for anybody, for I 
don’t want to over-influence you, but I must tell you 
another thing. As I already have said, she likes peo- 
ple who know something; and she says that ministers 
know more than any of them, if they have been 
out of the seminary long enough to forget some things ; 
that they average up better than other classes of men, 
can talk on more subjects, make better after-dinner 
speeches, and get up more discourses. She says that 
a politican uses the same speech from one end of a 
campaign to the other, stories, jokes, alleged jokes and 
all ; but a preacher comes up every Sunday with some- 
thing new, or at least turned inside out, or with new 
tucks and frills; and that preachers can draw more 
people more regularly and from age to age than any 
other class of speakers. 

“I am mentioning these things, my dear boy, not 
with any special design, but because it is such encour- 
aging talk for ministers. And, of all things, a min- 
ister needs a wife who will encourage him instead of 
nagging him. I made that mistake with your father 
when we were first married. I thought it would im- 
prove him if I told him where the weak points were — 
it is easy, you know, to tell somebody else how not to 
do a thing. But one day a motherly woman, whose 
encouraging smile always fell like a sunbeam on a min- 
ister’s path, said to me: ‘You criticise your husband 
too much. Don’t you know that every time you pick 
at his sermons you chip ofif a little piece of his cour- 
age, and by and by he will not have any courage left? 


A MINISTER'S WIFE 


211 


On the tombstone of more than one minister it could 
be written, “Here lie the last remains of Rev. Blank 
Failure. His better half picked at his sermons until 
he died of infantile paralysis.” ’ 

“After that I could hardly wait until the next Sun- 
day. I was so eager to tell my man that he had 
preached the best sermon I ever heard in my life. 
There are better ways for a wife to bring up her min- 
isterial husband than by roasting his sermons for Sun- 
day dinner. 

“The little girl who told you that you could be an 
elephant if you only knew it would surely be a good 
helpmeet.” 

I sat right down and wrote to mother that if she 
had seen that little girl stirring up the East Coast of 
Florida the last Sunday I was there, she would won- 
der how they got enough of my remains to send them 
home. 

Mother replied that she had not heard anything 
about the incident, and that the family always spoke 
hopefully of me. But whether or not Ethel was 
spoken for she could not say. “Her mother told me 
the other day,” she continued, “that her locket might 
throw some light on the matter, if anybody knew 
whose face was in it, but she had never been able to 
find that out.” 

Then she added, “A young Mr. Rosslyn was here 
a few days, and both the girls seemed to admire him. 
Ethel said that she liked him for his sister’s sake; but 
I don’t know about a girl’s liking a handsome young 
man for his sister’s sake. His father is in Congress, 
you know, and he is ambitious to succeed him some 
day. He certainly is attractive.” 

Of course, this last observation was extremely con- 
soling. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

A Theological Rough and Tumble. 

The intellectual powers through words and things 
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way. 

— Wordsworth. 


There are wanderers o’er eternity 

Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored never shall be. 

— Byron. 

t4TT THAT are you preaching that kind of stuff 

yy for?” 

This question was fired at me by a liberal 
brother at the Monday meeting of our ministerial 
coterie and was prompted by the report of a sermon 
in the morning paper. 

“What was the matter with it?” I asked. 

“Matter with it? It is dead, and if there were any 
grave clothes left it would be buried.” 

“I can’t throw everything overboard.” 

“You will have to shed some of your excess bag- 
gage if you are going to be a progressive preacher,” 
he said with a toss of his head. 

“I am not going to the jumping off place just to be 
a progressive preacher. The old mountain stage 
driver said that he did not try to see just how near he 
could go to the edge of a precipice without going 
over, but kept as far away as possible. That was 
good horse sense, but some of you fellows try to see 
how near to nothing you can get and not fall out of 
your pulpits.” 


213 


214 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


^‘You seem to have changed some.” 

“I have. So did Paul; so did Luther; so did Wes- 
ley. It is a heaven-born right when a man finds that 
he is going the wrong way, and preaching is on the 
wrong track when it is headed toward negation, doubt 
and denial.” 

“That is only theoretical, metaphysical, and not the 
practical part of preaching.” 

“I don’t think so. It is fundamental in the Chris- 
tian religion that God is not on the side of the impeni- 
tent sinner, but is on the side of the penitent man. 
Your new departure seems to me to be in the direc- 
tion of more favor to the impenitent man and less 
sympathy for the penitent man. It makes sin less sin- 
ful and the consequences less dangerous. And it 
makes less of the death on the Cross for the man who 
looks at it through penitent tears. It balks at the 
great hymns of atonement and reconciliation and de- 
liverance from guilt which have thrilled penitent souls 
through all time. 

“We want a note of reality, not mere sentiment.” 

“The mightiest note of reality ever heard in preach- 
ing is that cry, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand.” But that is not the cry of the new 
preacher. He has put the soft pedal on it, and he is 
not preaching ‘that fear of God which searches the 
heart.’ He is more concerned to have men repent of 
belief in some of the things the Bible teaches than to 
repent of the things which the Bible forbids.” 

“Miracles, for instance ! Only women and chil- 
dren believe in miracles!” 

“Hold on now, don’t be brash. Did women run 
after Jesus Christ to perform miracles in His day as 
men did? You could number the women on the fin- 
gers of one hand, but men were after Him all the time. 
They tore the roof off the house to get at Him. 


A THEOLOGICAL ROUGH AND TUMBLE 215 


Don’t you know that a man can’t stand it to be sick? 
He wants to get out of doors. A woman can stand it, 
and she did not begin to scream for a miracle as soon 
as Jesus came near. And don’t you know that a man 
wants a demonstration of power? And the miracles 
were demonstrations of power. Little boys stand at 
their mothers’ knees and hear the story of the mira- 
cles, and then they go away to heathen lands to be- 
come medical missionaries and to change the empires 
of darkness to kingdoms of light. They have caught 
the idea of the heavenly transforming power of Chris- 
tianity. Liberalism has no sense of conquering power. 
It never has had the courage or the will to tackle 
heathendom.’' 

'^Stop, before you get out of breath. Give yourself 
a chance to think. We think.” 

**The old slur again! You are the people who 
think, but what on earth do you think about that the 
rest of us cannot think? Are there wheels in your 
heads which are not in ours.” 

*Wou believe and then think. We think and then 
believe.” 

“You are mighty smart if you can think before you 
believe anything; smarter than the scientists, for they 
say that their minds wont work in an investigation 
unless they have a hypothesis, and a hypothesis is a 
something believed or assumed as true until it is 
proved otherwise. Who is the more scientific? Really 
now, can a man think until a belief in something gives 
him a starting point?” 

“We are for freedom of belief; you are not.” 

“Certainly I am, so much so that I think a man 
should be free to believe an old truth if he thinks it is 
true. Can you say as much?” 

Before he could answer, a little man in a corner 


216 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


piped up, “What have you done with Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob?’' 

“Put them with other myths and legends.” 

“Poor Jacob!” said the little man, “Esau scared 
him out of the country in his day, and now you have 
put him oE the map. He ought to have climbed that 
ladder and escaped when he had a chance.” 

“How many Isaiahs have you now ?” asked another 
member. 

“I don’t know. Haven’t counted them lately.” 

“I suppose the hen is still on the nest; but what 
about Polly Chrome’s Bible? How many colors is it 
to have this season?” 

“That depends on the critics.” 

“What is Q doing with Matthew, Mark and Luke? 
I want to get the cue so that I can understand the 
Gospels.” 

“I am not fully prepared to say what the latest 
conclusions of the scholars are regarding him.” 

“You mean the German scholars?” said another 
brother. 

“For the most part.” 

“And they do your thinking for you? Is that it?” 

“They can think.” 

“You know where their higher critics started, don’t 
you? With the assumption that nothing in the Bible 
which contains a supernatural element can be accepted 
as historical.” 

“Yes.” 

“And you know that this means a conclusion 
formed before investigation instead of after?” 

“Go on.” 

“And you know that such history as some scholar 
thinks it ought to have been three or four thousand 
years ago is a pretty cheap performance?” 

“It is philosophical.” 


A THEOLOGICAL ROUGH AND TUMBLE 217 

*‘But philosophers in study gowns cannot make 
history thousands of years after it has been made by 
men out on the firing line, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, 
and in any old way that happened to be most con- 
venient at the time/’ 

“How about the missing link?” asked the waggish 
little man in the corner, “has it been found?” 

Here another liberal brother broke into the con- 
versation with the reply: “Some bones have been 
found, but the experts have not yet finished their 
cross-examination of them.” 

“It seems queer to me,” said the little man, “that 
you are always trying to get back to a monkey ances- 
try, always a pining and a-longing for the old planta- 
tion and the old folks at home?” 

“Well, we are not missing some of the links,” said 
the liberal brother with an arch look, “the links be- 
tween our propaganda and the schools and places of 
influence. The scholars are with us, the critics and 
the experts are with us, and the strong men of the 
pulpits are coming our way.” 

“And it did not just happen so,” put in a conserva- 
tive brother who had so far been silent. “The game 
has been played with the skill of artists. Men of the 
new views have been worked in at every door, put on 
committees, on programs, in secretaryships, in pul- 
pits, put at the crank of every machine which was 
grinding things. You have been as wise as serpents 
and as harmless as eagles when they swoop down on 
the flock and pick up the lambs. I don’t admire your 
theology, but the skill with which you have staged the 
game and played your part is wonderful.” 

“I trust that there is nothing personal in these 
remarks,” said the chairman with bristling tones. 

“No,” replied the brother, “I am only alluding to 
those to whom I refer. But what are you trying to 


218 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


bring about? Do you want another slump to Unita- 
rianism ? That would be idiotic/’ 

“We want progress wherever it takes us.” 

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century there 
was a reaction to Unitarianism. Now at the begin- 
ning of the twentieth century there is another slump. 
Do you call that progress? The orthodox churches 
saved the day that time by heroic devotion and won- 
derful activity. They made the century the greatest 
in missionary enterprise and mighty movements that 
Christendom ever has seen. Are you going to spoil 
it all by compelling them to do their work over again ? 
What are you driving at, anyhow?” 

“We want a religion which the modern man can 
believe.” • 

“You don’t know the modern man, and you don’t 
know that you don’t know him, which makes it worse. 
The great Frederick’s reply to the man who proposed 
a new religion was that he did not know men. That 
is what seems to be the matter now. You do not know 
men.” 

“Whether we know them or not we are not trying 
to preach a medieval theology to them.” 

“Don’t be too sure of that. Medieval theology was 
a theology of works, a theology against which Luther 
arrayed the Reformation and brought in the modern 
period. You reject his doctrine of justification by 
faith and go back to the old medieval doctrine of sal- 
vation by works.” 

“We believe in salvation by character.” 

“Character is a product of salvation, not a cause of 
it. Salvation in order to character and good works is 
the order of God’s plan of redemption.” 

“What difference does the order make?” 

“Simply the eternal difference that a cause must go 
before the effect.” 


A THEOLOGICAL ROUGH AND TUMBLE 219 


‘*We go back of Paul to Christ/' 

“No you don’t; you go back of Paul to Judaism. 
Paul was converted from Judaism to faith in a cruci- 
fied and risen Christ. When you go back of Paul you 
go back to what he came out of. The two central 
points of the Christian religion are the Cross and the 
Resurrection. Paul magnifies both; you lessen the 
significance of both. You ought to know that there 
are only two general types of religion in the world, 
Judaism and the Christianity of the Cross and the 
Resurrection, and that the age-long struggle is be- 
tween these two. Candidly now, is not your new the- 
ology lining up on the off side of this struggle ?” 

“We believe in a religion of life.” 

“Very well, but how can you have a religion of life 
without religious life in the souls of men? You can- 
not gather fruit from dead trees, and if men are dead 
in trespasses and sin they must be quickened into spir- 
itual life before there can be religion of life.” 

“We have no use for creeds and dogmas.” 

“Which simply means that you have no use for the 
other man’s creeds and dogmas. A man might as well 
say that he has no use for a backbone as for a relig- 
ious believer to say that he has no use for a creed. If 
his religion has any backbone it will have a creed. 
You say that you are the people who think. What a 
lot of superfluous, vapid thinking you must do if you 
never arrive at a creed. It is a waste of brain mat- 
ter.” 

“Christianity had become too narrow ; we are 
broadening it out.” 

“Christianity had gone to China, to India, to the 
cannibals of the South Sea Islands, to the Bantus of 
Africa, the Esquimaux of the frozen North; and that 
was about as broad a reach as it could make without 
getting off the edge of the earth.” 


220 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“But it saved individuals ; we propose to save soci- 
ety.” 

“Let us know when you have saved society with a 
mass of unsaved individuals, and we will come around 
and see how you did it. But you are evolutionists, 
and, as Huxley tells us, Darwin regarded his survival 
of the fittest as the saving of the strongest individuals 
from the wrecks and convulsions and smash-ups and 
droughts and floods and disasters and destructions 
which swept the world clear of its myriads. You 
should not go back on your great authority.” 

“But don’t you believe in social salvation?” 

“Certainly, but there never was any great uplift or 
forward movement or improvement of human affairs 
which did not start with individuals and work 
through individuals.” 

“Nevertheless, individuals cannot live alone; they 
must live in the state and community, and therefore 
we must try to save these in order to be safe our- 
selves.” 

“Just so, and if ever there was a people who be- 
lieved in the individual it was the Puritans and the 
Pilgrims, and yet no other people ever did so much to 
save the state from despotism, the family from ty- 
ranny, the people from ignorance and the democracy 
from wrong and oppression.” 

“Oh, I suppose we shall never hear the last of the 
Puritans and the Pilgrims.” 

“They were of the kind that last, and did things 
which last.” 

“They made hard work out of it.” 

“It takes hard work to make good things grow or 

“Every kind of man has his day, and now the Puri- 
tan’s day is passing, and a new day is at hand.” 

“Do you mean a day which praises what the Puri- 


A THEOLOGICAL ROUGH AND TUMBLE 221 


tans did and denies the beliefs which made him do it?’^ 

“We can drop some of his beliefs and not miss 
them/* 

“What, for instance?** 

“Such things as the Virgin Birth, if you insist on 
particulars. It is not necessary or vital to believe 
that.** 

“But it is vital to know whether you decline to be- 
lieve it because it was supernatural. If you are hostile 
to the supernatural you cannot be a constructive or 
positive teacher of the life of Jesus Christ as told in 
the Four Gospels, for they are full of the supernatural. 
When you begin by denying the Virgin birth you are 
pretty sure to go on to a denial of his divinity and to 
end by denying his resurrection.** 

“We think there never was such another being on 
earth as Jesus Christ.** 

“Then why cannot you believe that He was born 
differently from other men?** 

“It would not be scientific.** 

“You mean that it would not be according to your 
idea of evolution?** 

“Yes.** 

“But the master type which evolution produced 
along the line of animal development always was a 
conqueror by force. And the mighty men were con- 
querors by force, fighters, the strong crushing the 
weak, killing, enslaving, and all that. The world was 
black with it when Christ was born, the empire over 
Him reeking with it, and his own nation under the heel 
of it. The very theory of evolution itself upsets the 
idea that out of such an environment as that, out of 
such a past as that, out of such a human welter, it could 
produce such a being as Jesus Christ. Surely it was 
not a case of ‘natural selection.’ Man was a fighter, 
it was in his blood from primitive days and heated by 


222 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


incessant practice. Jesus was not a fighter. He was 
just the opposite of the old conquering, crushing type. 
How do you account for the amazing difference, a 
difference so great that it has put its spell on all time ? 
How does the Bible account for it? The Bible says 
that he was not born like these other fighting animals. 
Something was left out of the old process. There- 
fore the result was different. There was a new kind 
of being in the world. The Lord Himself does not 
claim to have been able to make a Savior for mankind 
out of such old material as he found on the man-side 
of the human race. The Virgin birth seems to have 
been a Divine necessity. It fits the rest of the story. 
It lines up with a vast, immeasurable purpose. It fur- 
nishes a better explanation of so tremendous a fact as 
the person of Jesus Christ than the desperate exegesis 
of critical commentators or the weak denials of that 
class of people who never think a subject through. 
The common mind has accepted it because it is a law 
of human reasoning to demand a very great explana- 
tion for a very great event or fact. And men do not 
naturally believe that the Redeemer of their souls, the 
Prince of peace and the Lord of Glory, is to be ac- 
counted for by the same process of nature that made 
the lion king of beasts or the eagle ruler of the air.’^ 

“But we recognize that there is an intellectual re- 
volt against the old theology,” said a liberal brother 
who had so far suppressed himself, “and the new the- 
ology is an attempt to appease it and give the modern 
man something which he will believe.” 

“Now you are where I want to put in another 
word,” I interrupted. “You have struck another point 
of my departure from the New Theology. I became 
convinced that it was a surrender along the line of 
something more for something less, of something 
greater for something smaller, a belief here, a belief 


A THEOLOGICAL ROUGH AND TUMBLE 223 


there, something positive for something negative, a 
conviction for a doubt, a divine element for a human 
element, a doctrine which comforted believers for a 
doctrine convenient to unbelievers, plain language of 
Scripture for the pulverized language of criticism, 
texts full of strong meaning for emasculated texts, for 
husks which did not mean anything, great promises 
for faint possibilities, mountain ranges for molehills. 
There was no great, penetrating power in it. My spir- 
itual needs seemed to go far below it and my yearn- 
ings far above it. I could not take it to souls in the 
agony of sin. It seemed to make everything provided 
for human salvation less, while all my experience and 
observation showed me that sinful human beings need 
a very great salvation. 

“There is a revolt against God,’’ I added, “which 
is deeper than any revolt against creeds, and until that 
is reached the more theology compromises the more it 
will have to give up, until there will not be enough 
of it left to justify the support of a divinity school to 
split hairs over it.” 

“You always are talking about the result or con- 
sequences of belief,” replied the brother. “I think we 
should be intellectually honest, whatever the results. 
If straight thinking disturbs some twisted little minds 
we are not responsible for it.” 

This remark fired up the snappy little brother in 
the corner again, and he shot back the following: “I 
don’t take much stock in soft words for hard facts, in 
calling back-sliding a revolt. You know and I know 
that a man can back-slide head-foremost as well as the 
other end to. There are all kinds of back-sliding. One 
man back-slides in a horse trade, another when he is 
weighing groceries, another when he is swapping re- 
ligious beliefs, trading off his faith for a fad, or giving 
up something which he can stand on for a speculation 


224 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


up in the air; but it all comes out at the same no-ac- 
count place. Gladstone used to say that there is a 
sleight of heart as well as a sleight of hand, and the 
old man had considerable information.^' 

“What is the use of talking so much about the 
modern man,” interrupted another brother, “when half 
the human race is still swallowed up in heathendom, 
and half of the other half varnished savages or tailor- 
made barbarians? They all need the Gospel, and I am 
going to keep on preaching the Gospel.” 

“And may your days be long on earth,” said the 
chairman with a smile, “and may you hear the great 
'Well Done' in that day. I am a liberal, as you know,” 
he continued, “but I am not an illiberal liberal, and I 
confess that we cannot trust everything in religion to 
the intellect or to philosophy. We need to heed the 
words of Tennyson: 

“ ‘Hold thou the good ; define it well ; 

For fear divine philosophy 
Should push beyond the mark and be 
Procuress to the lords of hell.* 

“I also confess that there is deception in this in- 
cessant demand for something new in religion. In my 
study of comparative religion I have found the Chi- 
nese sages reaching the conclusion that what man 
needs is a new heart. Without that any new religion 
will prove as futile as an older religion. It amounts 
to little for a man to say that his head is in a revolt 
against the old theology if it is not in revolt against 
the old heart. We cannot be having new religions or 
new theologies all the time, but we can be making new 
hearts all the time. And new hearts will make the 
much longed for new heaven and new earth.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

Brother and Bother. 

T hey come as brothers with a bother. Every 
minister knows them. A pastor in a large city 
knows more of them. They come smoothly, 
softly, with words on their lips, flattering words and 
other words. They beam on you and proceed to bore 
you. They warm up as they go along and monopolize 
the enjoyment of the visit. 

A man came to me who had been hearing a self- 
appointed prophet preaching that the end of the world 
was at hand. He was full of it, running over. He 
thought that we were just there. “The end is near!’' 
he exclaimed, and then looked eagerly for me to be- 
come excited and was disappointed when I did not 
excite. 

I told him that the world had been coming to an 
end ever since I could remember and had never come 
to an end yet. The catastrophe always missed con- 
nection or went around our planet, whatever it might 
have done to some other world. 

“But didn’t the Master tell us to watch for the end 
of the world?” he asked. 

“No,” I replied, “He told us to watch ourselves, to 
watch against sin, and weariness and apostacy, and 
leave the winding up of the world to its Maker.” 

“But this prophet quotes from Professor Fiske, and 
Fiske used to be a great authority up our way,” he 
said. 


22S 


226 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“Yes, I know that Fiske has a passage in one of 
his volumes which bristles with catastrophe ; and, as I 
remember, he sees a great conflagration which the 
planets will start when they leave their places and 
plunge into the sun. But Fiske was in no hurry about 
having it come off — he put it a long way in the future,. 
You are in a hurry.” 

“It is coming soon,” persisted the man. 

“If you have no doubt of it,” I said, “you are just 
the man I want to see. We are looking for a parish 
house for some mission work over your way, and you 
own a big house there ; suppose that you let us have it 
for our work, for you won’t need it in a little while. 
We will take the risk on an immediate end of things.” 

This proposition sobered the man down, and he 
went away wise in worldly matters, if not in end-of- 
the-world matters. 

The next brother on the bother list was a woman, 
who came full of a progressive dress reform scheme. 
“She was determined, she said, “to have women 
clothed and in their right minds at the same time.” 

“I should smile,” I replied. 

“But I want your help.” 

I demurred. I told her that I was having my 
hands so full with the brethren that I did not have 
time to take up a forward movement in dress with a 
sister. “If I had a wife,” I added, “it might be differ- 
ent. She could help me in the matter.” 

“Different! Help you! You couldn’t do a thing 
if you had a wife. When your wife began to ask you 
whether the new style of dress was to be gored in the 
back and cut bias, you wouldn’t know where you were 
at. She would run you up a tree the first thing and 
keep you there until you promised to let dress reform 
alone and saw wood for the pulpit fires. Why, young 
man, it is because you don’t have a wife that I came 


BROTHER AND BOTHER 


227 


to you. I had been hunting the city over for an un- 
married minister to take up the matter with me, and 
when they told me of you, I made a bee-line for you.’^ 

“I suppose you have some marriageable daugh- 
ters,” I said, ‘‘and you are eager to start this reform 
before they have to be fitted out for the great event in 
a young woman’s life?” 

“Yes, sir, I have. I have two lovely girls, if their 
mother does say it. I wish you could see them.” 

Fortunately at this embarrassing moment my as- 
sistant knocked at the door and admonished me not to 
forget that I had a wedding ceremony to perform at 
that hour, and the interview closed. 

The next day a progressive politician called. He 
said that ordinarily he did not believe in mixing relig- 
ion and politics or that the pulpit should deal in par- 
tisan affairs, but when such a heaven-born cause as his 
needed the support of every righteous man in the 
community he felt no hesitation in appealing to an 
influential pastor. 

I asked him to outline his scheme, to state the 
principles of the new movement, which he did with 
alacrity, enthusiasm, and at full length. When he 
finally was through, I said: “We have heard all these 
things for years. You are simply offering the public 
canned goods with a new label.” 

“I am not prepared to admit that,” he replied, “but 
even if we are, is not that about what some of your 
new religious movements are — canned goods, old as 
the years, but with new labels? And the public does 
not know the difference.” 

“Some of the public do not, but men of political 
acumen know the difference in politics, and men of 
spiritual perception know the difference in religion. 
But why is there not more progress in politics?” 

“The bosses are in the way.” 


228 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“What is a political boss?’' 

“He is the agent of the big interests. They oil the 
machine and he runs it. He gets political power and 
they get the pudding.” 

“Why don’t the people throw the bosses overboard 
and keep the track clear?” 

“Because of human nature, and other circumstances. 
It’s human nature to want a boss or a leader. Jeffer- 
son wrote the Declaration of Independence and then 
his followers put their necks under his yoke, and they 
have kept them there ever since. The English rebelled 
against a Stuart, and then made Cromwell so much of 
a dictator that he told Parliament to be gone. Labor 
people complain of the bossism of the man who pays 
them wages and then turn around and hire walking 
delegates and union presidents to boss them more than 
their employers ever dreamt of doing or ever will 
dream of doing. 

“That is why democracy gets along so slow,” he 
continued, “and why freedom moves by fits and starts. 
The people want to be free and they want a boss. One 
man gets them out of a tight place, and the next man 
puts them in another tight place. The voters put a 
President at Washington, and the business men set up 
a king of finance in Wall Street. Yes, sir, we are 
having two capitals in this country, with a lot of Con- 
gressmen on the Potomac and a lot of captains of 
industry on Wall Street. I tell you that it is the undy- 
ing desire of humanity to have a boss. When the 
bosses get to running in opposite directions there is a 
head-on collision, and history takes on color. You 
have something like this in church affairs, don’t you?” 

“We do; there always is some infallible individual 
around: an infallible Pope, or an infallible higher 
critic, or an infallible expert scholar with his latest 
conclusions, or a founder of Christian Science who 


BROTHER AND BOTHER 


229 


rules to the last word which can be uttered in the 
service. We prance all over the lot in our demands 
for freedom in the pulpit and then refuse to permit a 
people the freedom to choose what they want taught 
for the comfort of their own souls and the welfare of 
their children. We are to be free to talk, but they are 
not to be free to hear.” 

‘^And you get the salary and they pay the bills? 
Well, that is a little bit strong.” 

“Yes, sir, I think sometimes that there ought to be 
an anti-cruelty society started to protect some churches 
from preachers who think that they should be as free 
as a cyclone that tears down the meeting house. I 
have seen men come out of church with their faces 
flushed with anger and women with tears in their eyes 
as they thought of the harm which that kind of preach- 
ing was doing to their children. They go to the ser- 
vice for bread, and some preachers give them a stone 
between the eyes. I used to do some of it myself ; but 
I got to thinking that the people wanted a pastor to 
lead them into green meadows and not to the edge of 
precipices, and I made some change. 

“I think as you do,” I continued, “that the people 
want a boss, and it makes me feel uneasy for democ- 
racy sometimes. But for the same reason I propose to 
stick to the business of preaching Him who came into 
the world to be Leader and Commander of the peo- 
ple.” 

“Then you do not care to jump into the move- 
ment.” 

“No, I am not on that kind of a jump today.” 

“Good boy. So long.” And he was off. 

The next man with a movement wanted to reform 
church entertainments. They kept him buying tickets 
and going to suppers and recitals and this and that 
and the other thing, he said, until he could not rest. 


230 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


*‘What is the good of it all ?” he exclaimed. “Why are 
the women always getting up these suppers and mak- 
ing a man hunt for an oyster in a quart of water?” 

“Why do the Wall Street crowd float stocks on 
water?” I asked. 

“For the money there is in it, of course.” 

“And for the same reason the women float an oys- 
ter on water, for the money. But the Wall Street men 
put the money in their pockets, and the women put it 
into the church treasury. Roast your business associ- 
ates before you howl at the women.” 

“There are too many churches, too many denomina- 
tions, too much competition. What is the use of start- 
ing more churches than can live?” 

“What is the use of starting more business houses 
than can live? A hundred business ventures die where 
one church venture gives up. Walk along a business 
street, and you see rent signs in windows ; some busi- 
ness venture has been there and died. You don’t see 
many rent signs in church windows. The commercial 
agencies publish a weekly list of bankruptcies in busi- 
ness ; they could cover the church failures with a few 
figures once a year . 

“Say what you will, sir,” I added, “there is no line 
of business on earth run with more wise caution and 
closer to the laws of good economies than church busi- 
ness. In the world’s business fools rush in where 
other fools have lost their last dollar, but in church 
enterprises men walk with their feet shod with a prep- 
aration of wisdom.” 

“Now, about denominations,” I went on; “how 
many churches and fraternal or secret organizations 
do you belong to?” 

“Let me see,” he said, stopping to count ; “seven, I 
think.” 


BROTHER AND BOTHER 


231 


“One for every night in the week. And you belong 
to one church; and go to one service a week, if the 
weather is not too cold or too hot, and you complain 
about too many denominations. Are you reasonable V* 
“Perhaps not.” 

“Well, I know how you reason. In matters of the 
world you reason from the grub-worm up, and in relig- 
ious matters you reason from the arch-angels down. 
Whatever in worldly affairs is higher than the trail of 
the grub-worm passes, but in church affairs whatever 
is lower than the heavenly pinnacle is criticised. I 
am not finding fault with your standard for the church, 
but I am calling attention to the error in your conclu- 
sion. The ideal church, the church over whose towers 
and minarets no shadow will fall some day, has to be 
built up in a very imperfect world; and between you 
and me I think that denominationalism, competition, 
helps more than it hinders. The worst period which 
the church ever has seen in its history was during 
those long, dark ages when there was only one denom- 
ination. Our country has its multiplied denominations 
and its cities bristle with church spires; Mexico has 
little more than one denomination. On which side of 
the Rio Grande would you rather live?” 

“Well, I am not about to sell out and move to Mex- 
ico, that is sure. But as you said a moment ago, the 
church stands for such high ideals that I do not like 
to see any flies on it.” 

“So you have started out to swat some of them? 
Is that it?” 

“Yes, that is it. 

“I can tell you how to swat this entertainment sys- 
tem of raising money. Hit it with a thumping con- 
tribution when the basket comes around, and get up a 
conspiracy with the rest of your brethren to do the 
same thing; and then the women won’t have to water 


232 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the oyster to liquidate church debts. Certainly you 
have noticed how lonely a dollar bill looks in some 
contribution boxes, even if the congregation is large. 
The nickels are 16 to 1 over everything else.” 

‘‘But I thought you said that the church is wise 
financially.” 

“So I did, and so it is. The church begins with 
nothing, seldom has anything in the treasury but a 
deficit, and yet gets there, even to the rim of the 
earth.” 

“I see your point,” he said as he rose to leave, “and 
I hope that at the next supper I shall be able to see 
the oyster without having to get a magnifying glass 
to find it.” 

“Oh, go up to Oyster Bay and you won’t have to 
strain your eyes to see something.” 

The last brother with a botheration on his mind 
was a man who felt troubled because there was so 
much preaching and so little result. Of course, he told 
me that Peter preached one sermon and had 3,000 con- 
versions, and now we preach 3,000 sermons and have 
one conversion. “If preachers would preach right,” 
he went on, “men would be converted and the church 
grow with leaps and bounds. I want you to join with 
us in starting a preachers’ reform society. Yes, sir,” 
he exclaimed with a whack on my desk, “that is what 
we need, a society to reform the preachers.” 

I told him that the preachers already were in so 
many reform societies that some of them did not have 
sufficient time to prepare their sermons, and that this 
class probably would rush into the movement and try 
to reform the good preachers out of their effi'ciency. 

“As to Peter’s great sermon and its wonderful ef- 
fect,” I said, “it humbles any minister into the dust as 
often as he reads that amazing story. But that ser- 
mon did not stand alone and could not be looked at as 


BROTHER AND BOTHER 


233 


we would at a giant oak in an open field. That ser- 
mon was preceded by the most extraordinary events 
that the human race has ever witnessed — the tragedy 
of the Cross with its Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world, the resurrection of the crucified One, the 
ascension into Heaven, and the sending of the Holy 
Spirit from the throne above, — events which had not 
come to the minds of Peter and his solemnized hearers 
as a record across the ages, but with all the vivid, 
startling power of something seen with their own eyes, 
felt by every nerve and fibre of their being. It was a 
climax of centuries of preparation, an hour when the 
clock struck for the past, for the present, and the fu- 
ture. Do we wonder that at such an hour Christ's 
chosen preacher produced so great an impression? Is 
it correct reasoning or fair comparison to expect as 
much from the preacher surrounded by the common- 
place of an ordinary Sunday?” 

“No, I presume not; but I wish you would join our 
society. I want you for a vice-president.” 

“To stand around waiting for the president to die? 
But who is the president to be?” 

He did not answer, and I inferred that modesty 
stood in his way. The interview closed with my tell- 
ing him that one minister was all I could reform and 
that he was so near at hand that I did not need to join 
a society to reach him. 

When he was gone, I said to myself: “Another 
society, another appeal for money, another set of offi- 
cers in the little limelight, another man behind a 
desk dictating to a stenographer, another bunch of 
men telling other men how to do things — the great 
American pastime.” 

Then I fell into a brown study. A study is one 
thing, a brown study is another thing. The study has 
four walls. A brown study has no bounds. It mixes 


234 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


with all things, runs off into endless space, into time 
where the clock does not tick and the flow is undis- 
turbed. I thought of the dissatisfaction which was 
back of the man and his attempted movement, and of 
the disappointment which beats at the door, sometimes 
like a fire-alarm, sometimes like the petulance of un- 
strung nerves, sometimes like the tapping of a fading 
hope, and again with the firmness of a resolve which 
cannot be overlooked. 

I said : ‘^Surely it is a compliment to the minister, 
that the world expects so much from him that it can 
feel so much disappointment. It seems to measure our 
profession by the compass of all possibilities, and if 
we do not fill up the measure to the rim and the brim 
the world fills in the space with its complaints. 

“But where in Holy Writ is it shown that the min- 
ister is responsible for all the failures? Listen to the 
wail of the prophets. Who was to blame? Listen to 
Jesus Christ’s woes against Capernaum and Chorazin. 
Who was to blame? Listen to the note of disappoint- 
ment in his closing discourses. Who caused the fail- 
ure? In the parable of the sower all the seed was 
good, but some of the ground was hard highway, some 
was stony, and some overrun with weeds. And that is 
the world and the mankind of all time. 

“The preacher has to contend with all errors, all 
darkness, all sin, all wrong, all stupidity, all apathies, 
all sicknesses of mind and soul, the world, the flesh, 
and the devil, the superstitions of heathendom and the 
hypocrisies of civilization ; and if he does not straight- 
way make a millennium out of the mass of it and the 
meanness of it, the magazine writers and other irre- 
sponsible critics proclaim the pulpit a failure.” 

I say that it is at once a compliment and a con- 
demnation. It is a compliment to the preaching of the 
glorious Gospel that it has raised public expectation to 


BROTHER AND BOTHER 


235 


such a height, and it is a condemnation that we do not 
better meet the expectation. But the world does not 
need to rub it in. We all know it. The ministers in 
all the land who do not know it and feel it and lament 
it could be counted On the fingers of one hand. There 
be men who are the salt of the earth, the soul of sin- 
cerity, patient, faithful, fruitful laborers, and yet ready 
to put their hands on their mouths and their mouths in 
the dust, when they think of the difference between 
the performance and the expectation, yea, the aspira- 
tions of their own hearts. In that last summing up of 
things, who will have to answer for the failures? If 
3,000 sermons strike only one man, where are the 2,999 
others? Of the sun’s flood of light only a two-bil- 
lionth part hits our earth. Where does the rest go? 
Into endless, empty space, most of it. Where does the 
light of the sermons go? Into hearts that love dark- 
ness, much of it. But ever more it is true that there 
is good seed which falls into good ground, and there 
are harvests which are gathered in this world and in 
another world. 

But after all, there is a baffling mystery in the fail- 
ure of minds made for truth, hearts made for love, and 
souls made for hope, to connect with the greatest sys- 
tem of truth and love and hope ever given to the 
world. It is the disappointment of the moral universe. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

When Rumor Got on the Wing. 

A bout this time a couple of rumors got on the 
wing. It was rumored that I had a call from 
another church, and at an increased salary. The 
rumor grew every time it turned another corner. For- 
tunately, I was soon able to collar this report and put 
it down. I knew that a committee of some half dozen 
gentlemen had been present in my morning congrega- 
tion. What happened after they returned to the hotel 
a friend told me. He said that they evidently had 
heard a considerable number of pastors in various 
parts of the country and that they had become experts 
in the sampling business. After hearing a man preach 
they would go back to their hotel and put him on a 
dissecting table, so to speak, and then get out their 
sharp knives and go through him. When they were 
done, the candidate was dead ; and without waiting for 
the funeral they went out to look for another promis- 
ing specimen. 

''Some of the committee,” added my friend, 
‘‘thought that you were too young, others that you 
would not be a good mixer, others that you would be 
a better preacher than pastor. One thought that you 
talked too loud, another that you did not talk loud 
enough. One said you were too superficial, another 
that you were too philosophical. Another said he could 
not follow you, and another that he had arrived at the 
end of your sermon before you were one-third of the 
237 


238 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


way along. They seemed to want a man who always 
would be around and never be in the way ; always on 
the job, but not meddling with things; directing, but 
not felt; visible, but invisible; a good organizer, sub- 
ject to the powers that be; a strong man who knew 
when to weaken; a harmonizer who could gracefully 
retire when the obstreperous members got busy. 
They doubted whether you would fill the bill. 

“At the end of it you were a dead man. After the 
dissection was over and while they were washing their 
knives, I heard one of them say : “Where shall we go 
next?*’ To which another replied: “Let us hunt up a 
row of wax figures; perhaps we can find a preacher 
there that does not speak too loud, or too long, or 
gesture too much, or part his hair on the wrong side.” 

“Keep your eye on the newspapers,” said my 
friend, “and you will see it announced one of these 
mornings that their church has called the Rev. Dr. 
Wax Figure to the pastorate.” 

I was able, therefore, to say to my people that there 
was no substance in the rumor. 

The other rumor had it that I was to marry a rich 
young widow. It was a lively rumor, all the more so 
because of the general impression that more widows 
marry than young women, Sammy. The rumor said 
that she was plain, but that her manners and her bank 
account were pleasing. Her fortune increased with 
the spread of the rumor. It began with a quarter of a 
million, and a few days later she had half a million. 
She was a thrifty old girl. 

There was so much talk about it that I was almost 
afraid to call at a home where I knew that they kept 
a parrot, for fear that the mischievous bird would sing 
out: 

“Polly wants a crack at you. 

Going to marry too! Hoo? Hoo?” 


WHEN RUMOR GOT ON THE WING 239 

A brother minister congratulated me and remarked, 
‘‘I hear she is well fixed.” 

“Yes, like a fixed star,” I replied, “so far away that 
I do not know her.” 

“Nothing doing, then?” 

“No, and what do I want with a wife? I find it 
difficult to please the church myself, and if there were 
two of us the difficulty would be doubled.” 

“When a church calls me, I give them to under- 
stand that they are not calling my wife.” 

“But if I had a wife and she was not called with 
me I should soon want to go back after her.” 

“The churches keep a minister on his travels fast 
enough these days.” 

“And it is easier to pack a trunk than to pack up a 
family and land in a chaos of household stuff and 
never know where to find anything for a month or six 
weeks.” 

“Don’t multiply the difficulties.” 

“I am not. I am keeping them simpifield to one.” 

The rumor about the young widow finally lost cour- 
age, and gossip took another turn, namely : that I had 
a love affair in Florida. This edition grew until it 
was reported that I had proposed suddenly, but the 
young lady moved slowly and asked for time to go 
back North and see the financial head of the family 
concerning the matter. Even the men jollied me about 
it, and a smart young broker said: 

“Did you tell her you adored the ground she 
walked on?” 

“No ; what would have been the use to tell her that 
when land within a stone’s throw of her could be 
bought for two dollars an acre? It might be worth 
while to tell a girl that you adored the ground under 
her feet when she was walking on a street where every 
foot of the land was worth $10,000. But you couldn’t 


240 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


get anywhere with a girl in Florida measuring your 
love in land value.” 

“Love ! What a word !” 

“It need not worry you; but if you fellows have 
dropped it out of your vocabulary why don’t you 
marry the multi-millionaires’ daughters, and keep good 
American money from going over to Europe?” 

“Because we do not have the goods. It takes titles, 
and our Simple Simon democracy is short on titles. 

“Start an agitation for the protection of a title in- 
dustry at home and supply the need. It will keep 
money from going abroad as much as a protective 
tariff.” 

“That is a good idea, but the titled bunch over 
there are bigger spendthrifts than Americans ; and our 
plutocracy likes a spendthrift, the bigger the better.” 

“That is, the big leak in social economy is at the 
top?” 

“Of course. Plutocracy sucks the money up from 
the bottom and spills it out at the top. It always has 
been so, and I guess always will be so. The Roman 
aristocracy did it, the feudal lords did it, the nobility 
does it, the autocracy does it, the plutocracy does it. 
The names differ; but they all are alike, all tarred 
with the same stick. They all have their schemes for 
doing it, and democracy does not stop them. They 
are like trees sucking sap out of the ground to make 
leaves on the top branches. They do it with trusts, 
with combinations, stock markets, manipulation of 
food supplies, political machines and high taxes, any 
old way and every new way to get the money from the 
masses up to the high-fliers. 

“And you know how they make it fly — ten thou- 
sand dollars for a bull pup, another ten thousand for 
the wife’s poodle, half a million for a yacht, and so on. 
And then when they can’t make it go fast enough they 


WHEN RUMOR GOT ON THE WING 


241 


take a titled son-in-law to work on the job. What he 
can’t do is not worth talking about. But I think we 
shall soon have some big enough spendthrifts to meet 
the wants of the plutocracy. You preachers can help 
a little by scaring them and making them afraid to die 
rich. Hurl Dives and Lazarus at them.” 

“But do you really think that with all our advan- 
tages and education for the American girl that we are 
only making her a spendthrift?” 

“Certainly, if she can get hold of the money. Do 
you ever meet a rich girl who has any religion ? Hon- 
est now, Doctor, do you?” 

“Yes, sir, I met a rich girl last winter who had so 
much religion that she made me want to sneak out of 
town like a tramp, and there are others.” 

“Then there was a love affair in Florida?” 

I have forgotten what reply I made to the gentle- 
man. Perhaps a letter which I received the next 
morning had a distracting effect upon my memory. 
The letter was from Miss Kingsley, and among other 
things she wrote: 

“We have seen some anxious days. Papa has been 
passing through a financial peril. His mining proper- 
ties, of which I told you once, are the source of a 
handsome income; but some six months ago he dis- 
covered that a serious attack on the title was about to 
be made. Mr. Rosslyn, who is a very bright young 
lawyer, brought him the word. How he made the 
discovery he did not say, but I learned afterwards 
through his sister, my college chum, that he had been 
offered a tempting fee if he would go into the case, but 
declined. Papa talked it over with him, and then they 
both went West. They had a hard fight. Papa said, 
with the shrewdest and most conscienceless set of men 
that ever trailed mining titles for weak points. But 
they downed the enemy. Rosslyn is a wonder. Papa 


242 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


declared, when he takes off his coat and rolls up his 
sleeves/^ 

I laid down the letter with a feeling of relief that 
the Kingsleys had not lost the Western end of their 
income, but also with some fear that the smart young 
lawyer might not confine his interest in Mr. Kings- 
ley’s possessions to his mining properties. 

Then I dropped into a meditative mood and asked 
myself whether life was only a wrestle with fate. 
How strong a young man seems ! He walks into the 
future as if it were all his own. A little color here, 
and hope brightens. A little shadow there, and for- 
tune falters. A little tangle in the skein, and the web 
is not woven. A little leap to a higher place, and the 
victory is won. 

“The painter gazed on his canvas, 

Stretching before him so fair, 

Then lifted his soft white frost brush. 

Touching it here and there. 

Touching and blending with colors. 

From crimson to russet brown. 

And gilding the pathway, the stream and the bridge. 

Soft showers of gold came down.” 

The painter makes the picture fair ; but the plodder 
on life’s long way, what will he make? That is an- 
other story. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Preparing for the Stranger on Earth. 

I HAD been thinking for days about the progressive 
preacher. I had asked myself many questions 
about him: what is he? where is he? what is his 
relation to the past and what to the future? is he at 
the right angle? 

In attempting to answer these questions I seemed 
to lack a viewpoint. But one evening my mother said 
that during the afternoon she had called at a home 
where they were expecting the visit of a little stranger 
and were making much preparation for the coming 
event. And she added : ‘‘When I saw it all, the warm 
little blankets, and all the other things which love 
thinks of to protect the little body and guard the 
precious life, I thought to myself what a hazardous 
thing it is for a little stranger to come into our world 
and what a good thing it is that a mother’s love looks 
ahead and prepares for it.” Her observation struck 
me with the force of a new suggestion. It seemed to 
give me the angle from which to look at that wonder- 
ful text, “Prepared from the foundation of the world,” 
and that anything worthy of progressive preaching 
must link itself to the original preparation. 

It grew upon me, and by the time I was in the 
study the next morning my mind was full of it. I 
thought that man was the original stranger in the 
earth, and he knew it — “they confessed that they were 
pilgrims and strangers on the earth.” There was no 
243 


244 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


other creature like him. He was “the mysterious 
stranger/’ in a world of mystery, a mystery to himself, 
a mystery without, a mystery within, mysterious voices 
speaking in his soul, speaking in the winds, from the 
stars; mystery in the temple of his God, the God of 
mystery, mystery always saying to him, “Find me,” 
and when found making more mysteries. 

And danger everywhere, danger on land, danger on 
sea, danger in the wind that fanned his cheek, danger 
in the cloud which quivered with lightning, danger on 
the desert aflame with heat, danger in the blast of 
winter, danger from wild beasts, more danger from his 
fellow man. Danger to body, danger to mind, danger 
to soul, an enemy coiling in a word, a serpent’s poison 
in a look, a betrayal in the friendly grasp of a hand. 

Surely his Maker took great risk when He put man 
in the world, a stranger on a strange earth, a pilgrim 
feeling his way along an untrodden path with enemies 
of body and soul ambushed all along the way. Why 
then should we think it incredible that God never 
wanted him to get out of speaking distance and hear- 
ing distance ; that He did speak to him, that there was 
a Thus saith the Lord, great commandments, a law of 
safety and a Word of life? 

Grant that the great God put this stranger on the 
earth ; and a Word of God, the Bible, is the most logi- 
cal thing that you can think of. And what more logi- 
cal than prophets? Man was struggling up the steep 
hill-side and the prophet flung a light across the 
heights. Man faltered in the darkness of the night 
and the prophet said, “The morning cometh.” Call 
not the prophets a myth. God knew what the stran- 
ger climbing the hill-side and groping in the darkness 
needed. 

And God knew man’s danger from sin, its tempt- 
ing power, its subtle power, its polluting, defiling and 
destroying power. Making a moral being was hazard- 


PREPARING FOR THE STRANGER ON EARTH 245 


ous. Putting him a stranger in a strange world 
had appalling possibilities of disaster — it is spoken 
reverently. Did man’s Maker take the hazard with- 
out preparing for it? No, the Lamb of God was slain 
from the foundation of the world, “the Lamb which 
taketh away the sin of the world.” The peril of sin 
was near, but the Lamb of God was before the sin, 
and He was able to save to the uttermost. Sin does 
not make a dark spot which He cannot make white. 
Sin does not pollute a heart which His spirit cannot 
cleanse. It was love looking ahead, preparing from 
the foundation of the world for the coming of the 
stranger on earth. O progressive preacher, do not 
explain it away. Do not make it less than God made 
it. Do not make a plan of your own for man’s re- 
demption. You were not at the foundation of the 
world. Open your heart to God’s plan. Preach it, 
preach it! 

And again, it has been the way of Providence that 
man should enter into a share of the preparation, that 
one generation should assist in preparing for another. 
You scoff at the past, but what it has done for us is 
of immeasurable value at this present moment. It 
stumbled, but it came along. Its wrecks line the 
shore, but it has set lighthouses on our stormy coasts. 
It fell into errors, but it speaks great words of wis- 
dom to us when we are in confusion of mind. It tells 
us to keep to the right, when there is a precipice at 
the left. It has littered the way with dead leaves, but 
it has handed to us priceless gifts, treasures which it 
paid for with toil and tears and blood. We are “the 
inheritors of infinite inheritances.” You boast of your 
speed, but how long would it take to cross the ocean 
if you had to go back to the log canoe of the primitive 
man and work up through toil of hand and sweat of 
brain to the greyhound which leaps over the water 


246 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


with a fling at distance? You, smart man, jump from 
town to town on your lecture course; but if you had 
to begin with the little ox cart whose wheels were 
sawed from the end of a log you would have some 
trouble in reaching your appointments. When would 
your family ever have your Sunday dinner ready, if 
they had to begin the process of making knives and 
forks and china sets and table linen all over again? 
You sneer at the years which are gone and then come 
down out of your pulpit and put on an overcoat every 
thread of which has come out of the loom of time. 
When you are talking so proudly about running away 
from the past just stop and ask yourself what you 
would have to run in if it had not been for the past. 
The very shoes on your feet have been centuries in 
the making. 

You boast of your freedom of opinion, freedom of 
faith, freedom of mind, and all that. You whoop it up 
in the pulpit like a Fourth of July orator at a country 
celebration. You are a spread eagle with a white tie 
and perhaps a bald head. Where did you get all this 
freedom? Go ask the battlefields strewn with the 
dead, where the furrows ran with blood. Ask the 
waves where the ships of war grappled, went down, 
and left the waves stained with crimson. Go ask the 
martyrs who died at the stake or to make a holiday 
for old Rome. I hear a voice in Egypt crying, “We 
cannot make bricks without straw”; and I hear Lib- 
erty cry in the past, “I cannot build without the bodies 
of the slain, without tears and blood to pour on the 
dry dust which makes mortar.” 

You go into the library to fill your quiver with 
arrows to shoot at the heroic figures of the long ago — 
you are a valiant warrior against men three thousand 
years away from you — but who gave us the treasures 
of the library? Did mountain streams wash them 


PREPARING FOR THE STRANGER ON EARTH 247 


down to your study table? Did the leaves of trees 
bind themselves into immortal books? Did fire-flies 
hold the lamps while crickets wrote poetry? Did 
frogs croak the oratorios which will enrapture the lov- 
ers of song and thrill the hearts of the multitude for- 
ever? The brain, the pleading heart, the passion and 
the pathos of the ages, are there. Take off your hat 
when you go into a library, not because the rules of 
the house tell you so, but to bow to the men of the 
past who had brains enough and soul enough to make 
libraries priceless in value. 

Esau despised his birthright. He was a hairy man. 
Don’t grow his kind of hair. 

An American who made millions said there were 
only three generations between shirtsleeves and shirt- 
sleeves. What dc the degenerate heirs of wealth de- 
spise? The money? No, the industry and the thrift 
which made the money. What do the degenerate souls 
of believers despise? The fruits of Christianity? No, 
the faith which made the fruits. Beware. Don't 
climb a tree for fruit and then pull its roots up after 
you. 

You call yourself an optimist and paint rows of 
lilies and roses across the years of the future. And it 
is good to take the cheerful view. But you are blind 
in one eye if you do not see the evil in the world, and 
you cannot see straight out of the other eye if you do 
not recognize the connection between the past and the 
future. You know that a bank in America cannot do 
business with a bank across the sea unless there is 
mutual confidence. No more can you do business 
across the years of time without confidential connec- 
tions between the great things already done and the 
great things hoped for. Tear down all confidence in 
the past, and your future expectations will turn to 


248 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


chaos. You will not know where you are nor where 
you are going. 

You are not a progressive preacher simply because 
you say so. Every man in a madhouse thinks he is 
the only Solomon in the place. You would have us 
believe that orthodox people have not felt the tingle 
of a new idea in their minds since Augustine somer- 
saulted out of paganism into the Christian pulpit. 
But do you mean to say that if a man thinks straight 
he is not thinking at all, that his mind has got to 
jump the track and wreck the train before it can get a 
move on itself? 

What do you build railroads for but to get there? 
And when will the church get there if it goes back 
every few decades and tears up all the tracks and 
blows up the roundhouse? 

The law profession builds up a code by laying 
precedent upon precedent, decision upon decision, by 
rearing authority to high place. John Marshall is still 
the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. 
But you put Augustine and Calvin and Luther out in 
the woodshed among one-legged chairs and rusted 
stove pipes. And nothing is an authority with you 
unless it is so fresh that the ink is not dry. But know 
this, that the great kingdoms, the kingdoms which 
reach far and wide and hold sway over things multi- 
plied and vast, are the old kingdoms. The Mineral 
Kingdom, the Vegetable Kingdom, the Animal King- 
dom, how old they are! And Jesus Christ says, 
‘‘Come, inherit the kingdom prepared from the founda- 
tion of the world.” It is old, very old. God looked 
ahead when he was laying the foundations, and pre- 
pared for the stranger on earth a mighty kingdom, a 
glorious kingdom, a kingdom which would make his 
pilgrimage through the world a journey to everlast- 
ing safety and abiding peace. Hence, I say that the 


PREPARING FOR THE STRANGER ON EARTH 249 

really progressive preacher keeps in line with the 
plans prepared from the foundation of the world and 
obeys the marching orders of the King of the king- 
dom. 


I 


CHAPTER XXIX. 
When the Shadow Fell. 


‘^O Father, let me not die young. 

Earth’s beauty asks a heart and tongue 
To give true love and praise to her worth. 

Man’s sins and judgment-sufferings call 
For fearless martyrs to redeem the earth 
From her disastrous fall. 

I N the glow of October days, when the leaves were 
purpling the forest, I received a letter from Miss 
Searcy. She was with friends in the country, 
among the hills, and there were fine touches of poetic 
description in her glance at autumn’s daily prome- 
nade. “But in spite of the beauty which gladdens the 
hills,” she wrote, “and the radiant change of autumn 
tints, I am having little touches of the blues. Now I 
want to consult you about them, because ever since 
we had the interview concerning my unfortunate ex- 
perience with a too previous engagement I have felt 
that you could understand my state of mind without 
misunderstanding my heart. And if you are like other 
ministers who have blue Mondays perhaps you know 
how to prescribe for the trouble. 

“To begin with, let me give you some of my symp- 
toms, for I think half the cure of the patient is 
through the relief in talking out the trouble. Don’t 
physicians make a mistake when they put the lid on a 
patient’s long story? It might save medicine. Peo- 
ple think me very happy, because I am happy most of 
251 


252 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


the time, but an hour of the other kind goes a long 
way. Yesterday I said to the lady of the house here, 
who is a splendid specimen of middle age, ‘Why are 
you so blue today?’ 

“She replied, ‘If I must give you an honest answer, 
it is because when I was dressing this morning I saw 
a white hair in my head. It was the first time. How 
I resented it. I have been in the dumps all day 
about it’ 

“ ‘But why should that trouble you ?’ I said, ‘with 
such a wealth of brown hair as you have? You can 
easily hide the impertinent little intruder.’ 

“ ‘So I can, but I cannot hide the fact that it is 
the first thread in the shroud which time has begun to 
weave. I can fold a mass of brown hair over it, but 
all the same it will be a veiled prophet whose first lit- 
tle note of warning will bye and bye be a whole fu- 
neral. It is Old Mortality enlisting the hours in his 
ranks, and there can be nothing but surrender at last.’ 

“I pitied her, and I pitied myself, for I am only a 
dozen years behind her, and what are a dozen years 
to the clock which is everlastingly ticking and strik- 
ing, or to the grim reaper with the scythe? I have 
been skeptical ; I have doubted about the land beyond 
the stars, but here is the grim fact that I do not feel 
at home in a land of death. In my inmost soul, in 
your inmost soul, in all our inmost souls, we feel that 
death is an intruder. We resent it; we resent pain, 
sickness, and everything that assails life. Men call 
them natural, but we never get used to them. We 
never want them to call ; we never want them to stay ; 
we never want to go home with them. We are stran- 
gers to them and always want to stay strangers. 

“It is not so in the animal world, but it is so with 
our human world. The animal world bows to its fate 
and makes no comment. A wolf snatches a lamb 


WHEN THE SHADOW FELL 


253 


from the flock, and the herd holds no communion of 
sorrow. A bird looks into the nest emptied by a de- 
stroyer and asks no questions. A father looks into a 
coffin at the face of his dead boy and angrily asks, 
'Why did God take him away?’ A mother holds the 
lifeless form of her babe to her bosom and says, 'My 
heart cannot, will not, let it go. My darling must be 
living somewhere.’ I tell you, death is either a stran- 
ger or we are strangers in a world where death reigns. 
The animal kingdom may get along with it, for they 
never discuss problems. But beings who think of 
empires and have ambitions high as the stars and pas- 
sionate longings which take hold on the ends of time 
cannot get along with it. 

"They say that Lincoln was a melancholy man. 
He thought great thoughts, and therefore his mind 
dropped back into the clutch of melancholy. Some- 
body who saw Webster in the closing years of his life 
said that his face wore an expression of sadness deep 
as the meaning of his great eyes. 

"But this is not all of my trouble. I come now to 
my real concern. If we are strangers in a world 
where death reigns, then we naturally and truly be- 
long to a world where death does not reign ; and that 
means heaven, and it also means that we ought to get 
right with the other world. And now you begin to 
understand my symptoms. You say at once, 'She is 
getting religion.’ But why should an attack of relig- 
ion mean an attack of the blues? I suppose that it is 
because in religion we are first sick in order to be 
eternally well. 'They that be whole need not a phy- 
sician.’ I am not wholly happy ; I must be in need of 
the great Physician. 

"Then I think. Why didn’t I go home with my 
mother who died when I was a little girl? Why 
should I have stayed in a strange country? Mother 


254 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


used to say to me, ‘Come, Susie, let us take a walk 
today/ Would it not have been just as well on that 
last day if she had said, ‘Susie, I am going to take a 
long walk today to a beautiful land where the flowers 
always bloom; come with mother/ But oh, no, she 
did not say that. She said, ‘Susie, I am going so far 
today that you cannot go with me.’ Then she stroked 
my hair, kissed me again and again, drew me to her 
bosom and prayed God to make me brave and strong 
and to watch over me all the way. And I know that 
is the better part, to be brave and strong and try to 
walk in the path which shines more and more unto 
the perfect day. 

“But this is not all ; of late I have begun to feel a 
nameless something. I do not know what it is, not a 
vision in the night, but more like the shadow of a 
dark wing falling across a bright path. I seem to be 
compassed about by the mystery of existence and to 
hear voices of fate speaking across a lonely land. The 
leaves of the forest, fading and flushing, dying and 
blooming, give me pain. 

“ *0 "woodland thy odor through my brain 
Hath searched and stung with grief 
This sunny day, as if fear did stain 
Thy velvet leaf.’ ” 

Just a week later my mother came to me in much 
agitation, saying, “Here is a dreadful telegram from 
Miss Kingsley.” 

I took it and read the sad message: 

“Cousin Susie was fatally injured in an automobile 
accident this afternoon. The physician says that death 
is only a question of a few hours.” 

Miss Searcy died during the evening, as we learned 
from a report of the accident in the next morning’s 
paper. According to the statement, she was one of a 
little party of young people who were taking a ride 


WHEN THE SHADOW FELL 


255 


in the afternoon. As their limousine came to an up- 
grade another car came down the grade at a rapid 
pace. When it approached the driver, by some 
strange mistake, let his car swerve into the one which 
carried the young people. It struck the side on which 
Miss Searcy was sitting, and she was caught in the 
deadly force of the blow. No other member of the 
party was seriously injured. 

Later I received a letter from Miss Kingsley in 
which she said that they had planned to take the night 
train for home, and the ride in the afternoon was ar- 
ranged as a parting pleasure trip. At the last moment 
she herself was prevented from going by a caller. 
“When Susie stood on the porch,” she added, “she 
looked so beautiful and I felt such a thrill of admira- 
tion for her, that I threw my arms around her neck 
and said, ‘How I love you!’ 

“An hour later they carried her into the house, her 
beautiful face white as death. She was unconscious, 
but after a time she rallied a little and seemed about 
to speak. The effort was too great, and she closed 
her eyes again. About nine o’clock she revived and 
looked up into my face. A smile parted her lips, and 
she said: T am so glad you are here. It is the last 
time I shall see you, for I know I am dying. Yes, 
darling, we must part.’ She paused a moment, and 
then said, T am very young to die, only twenty-four. 
So young to leave this great world! Where am I 
going?* 

“I bent over her and kissed her dear face and re- 
plied, ‘The Master answered that question for us when 
He was going. He was for us on the Cross. He is 
for us at the gates of death.’ 

“‘Yes,’ she said, with a look of light in her face, 
‘He is for us ; He is the Savior.’ 

“A few minutes later she said: ‘It is growing 


256 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


darker, dear ; hold my hand. What a moment is this ! 

I am changing worlds!’ 

“I felt a. little tremor in her hand, and she was 
gone. Then sorrow overwhelmed me. It seemed 
more than I could bear. While the eye looks and the 
voice speaks you can bear it, but when you know that 
the loved one will never look into your face again, 
never speak again, that there will be only silence and 
memory, and that memory will say, Tt cannot be, it 
cannot be,’ and yet it is, the grief seems greater than 
we can endure.” 

They did not bring her body back to the city, but 
she was buried from the old home church where she 
had been a little Sunday-school girl and had sat in the 
pew with her mother. College mates and many friends 
were present, and one thought added to the grief of 
all — she was so young to die, a beautiful ray of sun- 
shine caught away in sudden darkness. It seemed to 
me the saddest funeral I ever attended; and when 
they had laid her beside her mother I came away 
thinking of the years which would come and go, of 
the sunlight which would glow on the hillside, of the 
rain which would fall on her grave, of the passer-by 
who would pause and read the inscription on her 
tomb, while she knew it not. In all the march of the 
years she would speak no word, have no part. 

Death seems such a finality. But One came armed 
and mighty to turn the dread finality into a glorious 
future. 

As the days were lengthening into weeks I received 
a letter from Miss Kingsley, which told me that she 
had been passing through a great struggle. “Death 
seems different,” she said, “when you look at it 
through tears which spring afresh every time a picture 
or a keepsake or a word penned by a dead hand re- 
minds us of what we have lost. When we are talking 


WHEN THE SHADOW FELL 


257 


sentimentally about the two worlds we easily span the 
gulf between them, but when the heart is trying to see 
the one gone it is harder. We are like those who 
come and go across a bridge which has long stood 
over a stream. The river seems narrow, the passage 
over the bridge easy. But a flood suddenly sweeps 
away the bridge, and then the gulf seems wide and 
deep. We must build again, and on deeper founda- 
tions, a stronger structure. So I find now with my 
faith in immortality and hope of another life. A flood 
of tears sweeps away some easy beliefs. I have been 
compelled to go over all my views again, to call sen- 
timent by its actual name, to look long and hard at 
arguments for immortality, to discern between illus- 
trations and proofs. When I am further along I hope 
to write you again and ask for your judgment regard- 
ing it.'' 

In the course of time the letter came, and I give it 
in the next chapter. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


Are We Immortal? 

T he letter from Miss Kingsley came, with its 
study of the great question. I give it be- 
low. 

I may as well say at the start that I have found 
much in the arguments for immortality which is not 
satisfactory. It is not strong enough to stand upon 
when we are reaching for something in eternity. 

They call spring a resurrection and a proof of our 
resurrection. It is only an illustration. In the spring 
two trees stand together; one puts forth leaves, the 
other does not. The one was only asleep during the 
winter, hibernating. The other is dead forever. In a 
few years the remaining tree will be dead forever. 
What I am asking is, Do we live forever? 

An acorn falls into the ground and dies. An oak 
springs out of it, grows, spreads its branches to the 
sunlight or battles with the storms. But this oak is 
not the individual which bore the acorn; it is another 
tree. It only means that this kind of tree continues. 
What I am asking is. Does the individual continue? 
The human race will exist a thousand years from now, 
but will I exist? When Rufus Choate was going 
away to Italy for his health his friends said to him, 
“We hope to see you back next year.” He replied, 
“I shall be here next year, and a thousand years from 
now.” Was he right? There are living lawyers, but 
259 


260 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


is Rufus Choate still living? Daniel Webster's last 
word was, still live." Does he still live? 

All arguments or illustrations which prove only 
that a kind or a race continues to exist falls short of 
the real answer to the great question, Does the indi- 
vidual live? A favorite theory with some of the latest 
rationalistic philosophers is that we are immortal, but 
that our immortality consists in the impression which 
we have made on the Eternal Mind. Because that 
mind is eternal the impression will be eternal. And, 
as the Eternal Mind is more impressed with a good 
life than with an evil life, the good will have a more 
blessed immortality. 

But does it satisfy us to be told that we shall be 
only an impression? Ten thousand years ago a fern 
laid its little cheek against the clay and died. Its 
substance dissolved, but the impression on the clay 
remained. The fern was no more, the impression was 
as abiding as the rock into which the clay hardened. 
My darling cousin turned her cheek to the clay ; what 
I want to know is that she herself still lives. Senti- 
ment alone does not answer that question. It is not 
enough that I want her to live. I wanted her to live 
longer here, but she died. Does death defy all our 
wishes? 

We think we are immortal; and let us grant that it 
is some proof that we are immortal, for what we think 
we ought to be or can be is a great help in making 
ourselves so. Would a bird think it could fly if it had 
no wings, or if the air would not bear it up? But 
having wings, it hops to the edge of its nest, opens 
them and flies. We have the instinct of immortality, 
we talk immortality, sing songs of heaven and picture 
to our hoping hearts another world. Would we do all 
this if there were not something real to answer to it? 
And yet we make mistakes about ourselves, build cas- 


ARE WE IMMORTAL? 


261 


ties which topple over, and dream of ships which never 
come. 

Therefore I want this instinct of immortality, if we 
may call it that, fortified by something which we can 
call fact, something that these argument-loving, proof- 
hunting minds of ours can grasp. So I have reasoned 
about it along a line of things which we know. We 
have accepted it as a fact that Jesus Christ was the 
best being ever in our world, and He talked about 
another world as familiarly as He did about this world. 
He talked about going home to his Father as a school 
boy would about going home when school is out. 
Was this best being mistaken, or deceived, or a de- 
ceiver? We cannot think so without doing damage to 
our capacity for making estimates of character. 

Again, the disciples whom he indoctrinated with 
this belief in another life, or eternal life, became the 
best men and women that the world knew. Was it a 
mistake that made them so good? Were they de- 
ceived into being righteous? Did they sow tares of 
error in their minds and reap goodness, fortitude, de- 
votion, sincerity, blameless life? Can we believe that 
without destroying the sequence of moral values? 
Consider the difference between an early Christian and 
a Caesar, between the Roman rabble who filled the 
Colosseum to feast their eyes upon a bloody spectacle 
and the martyrs who died for their faith upon the 
bloody sand? Was the belief which had such power 
to lift men and women out of the degradation and de- 
pravity of an utterly debased and debauched environ- 
ment only a mistake? It is not quite rational to 
think so. 

Once again, the Christian doctrine of immortality 
changed the world’s estimate of the value of human 
life. This is a fact of stupendous importance, and I 
do not want to let it stand on my own statement. 1 


262 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


find Mr. Lecky saying in that great work of his, “The 
History of European Morals” : “It is a historical fact 
beyond all dispute that refined and even moral socie- 
ties have existed in which the slaughter of men of 
some particular class or nation has been regarded with 
no more compunction than the slaughter of animals 
in the chase. The minute and scrupulous care for 
human life and human virtues in the humblest form 
was indeed foreign to the genius of paganism. It was 
produced by the Christian doctrine of the intestimable 
value of each immortal soul. It is the distinguishing 
and transcendent characteristic of every society into 
which the spirit of Christianity has passed.” 

This is great testimony, especially in view of the 
fact that the historian himself was somewhat of a 
rationalist. The characteristic of which he speaks is 
stamped upon our day as never before. It is the spirit 
which has prompted all our laws to protect life and 
health, keep pure the water we drink, the air we 
breathe, the food we eat, the milk which is given to 
infants. It is the spirit which has built hospitals and 
infirmaries and asylums, which takes defective human- 
ity in its arms and helps it to live, which makes eyes 
for the blind, ears for the deaf, and tongues for the 
dumb. In a word, we are living in a safer and a bet- 
ter world today because nineteen hundred years ago 
men believed that Jesus Christ had risen from the 
dead, that He lives forevermore, and that his believ- 
ers and followers are to live forevermore. 

Now, my conclusion is that the belief which has 
thus taught the human race the greatest lesson of its 
earthly existence, namely, the value of human life, and 
which has changed the face of the world, cannot be 
dismissed as a superstition or a delusion. To do so, 
it seems to me, would be to turn our thinking on 
moral subjects into chaos, to strike at the center of 


ARE WE IMMORTAL? 


263 


reason itself. What is the use to talk about reason 
if the world can get its best results, its immeasurable 
values, by tying itself to a baseless belief? In my own 
humble way I feel that I must believe in the Chris- 
tian doctrine of immortality, not only to save my soul, 
but also to save my reason. 

I have not been talking theory, but facts, the facts 
which have had stupendous place in the history of the 
last nineteen hundred years. I have been talking 
about the forces which, starting in the souls of men, 
have worked themselves out into the life of communi- 
ties, the laws of nations, and which have blossomed 
and fruited in the welfare of mankind. This is as 
scientific as to study the forces which work upon man 
from without. 

Lecky says that nature does not teach man that it 
is wrong to slay his fellow man without provocation. 
Hence, men who study only nature become so im- 
pressed by the abandon with which it has always slain 
that they cannot grasp the faith or fact of a future 
life. A natural scientist is only half a scientist. It 
is not difficult to see why he should be skeptical. He 
finds death such an awful fact of history, its trail 
everywhere in the past, whether millions of years ago 
or yesterday. Every spot of earth is a battle ground 
where it has conquered. The earth itself is a vast 
tomb, and all life was a procession to it. As long as 
the scientist follows this trail only, he will find it more 
easy to believe in death than in life beyond the grave. 
But Jesus Christ started a new trail, a new line of 
influence and transforming power in the mind and 
heart of the human race. A complete scientist, an 
all-around, four-square scientist, studies the facts of 
the inner man as well as the outer man, of the soul as 
well as the body, of the spiritual realm as well as the 
material realm. His study being more comprehen- 


264 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


sive and more complete, his conclusions are more 
complete. 

Stand now at another point of view. I said that I 
wanted my cousin to live because I loved her, but I 
did not have the power to save her. Does not God 
want those whom He loves to live? And He has the 
power to save, the power of an endless life. There- 
fore will He not save them? 

Again, God loves goodness, and surely He does not 
want it to perish. But goodness is not an abstrac- 
tion, it is a quality of living men and women. If the 
good man lives goodness will live with him. That 
God should decree to him eternal life seems to be a 
more rational belief than that He should decree death 
to him. 

But death is a destroyer, you say. So it is. It 
destroys something. But every student of the earth’s 
formations and the rise from the lowest kingdom to 
the highest knows that the process always has been 
along the line of destruction. There must be destruc- 
tion of something in the mineral kingdom, something 
of form and constitution, in order to get something up 
from it into the vegetable kingdom. And something 
must be destroyed in the vegetable kingdom to get its 
higher quality of life up into the red blood of the ani- 
mal kingdom. And man destroys in all kingdoms be- 
low him in order to bring something up into his king- 
dom. At the last step in the upward way the form of 
man is destroyed in order to take his spirit up into 
God’s eternal kingdom. How scientific is the grand 
conclusion of the great apostle: “It is sown in cor- 
ruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dis- 
honor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it 
is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is 
raised a spiritual body.” 

What the new form will be, what the new home 


ARE WE IMMORTAL? 


265 


will be, we need not ask. I see a drop of water hang- 
ing to the fringe of a cloud. It starts to earth, and 
when it reaches us it has been transformed into a won- 
derful crystal, more beautiful than human ingenuity 
could make. The God who can so transfigure a drop 
of water in its flight from cloud to earth can also 
transfigure the spiritual body in its journey from earth 
to heaven: 

Sometimes I hear even ministers speak lightly, if 
not scoffingly, of the music of heaven. ‘T don’t want 
to stand on the golden street and sing all the time,” 
says the scoffer. But now listen : we hear the hoarse 
voice of the storm, it terrifies us. Listen again; we 
hear a bird caroling in the tree, it gladdens us. Again 
we are in a hospital, and groans of anguish and cries 
of pain distress us. We pass to a great concert hall 
and beautiful voices fill our hearts with rapture. 
Earth is full of alarming voices and murmuring com- 
plaints, of cries of anguish. Through all time the 
multitudinous troubles of the world have been send- 
ing their wail of sorrow up to the ear of God. What 
in his answer? In heaven earth’s cry of alarm, of pain, 
and sorrow, and despair, will be changed to music. 
The crashing of thunder, the roar of the storm, the 
wild cry of the wind, the angry voices of men, will all 
be subdued into the melody of song. It is the symbol 
of a glorious victory. 

“Why should I falter in my faith, 

When He who made me keeps 
And guards His own and daily saith, 

The earth with sorrow weeps, 

But Heaven is glad with songs that bear 
A harmony beyond compare.’ ” 

Surely we can believe this, that nothing will be 
wanting in the home which God prepares for those 
whom He has redeemed through his Son. I never ask 


266 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


myself such questions as, ‘‘Shall we recognise our 
friends in heaven?’’ I take it that in heaven we shall 
have all the power of recognition that we have here. 
It would seem better to ask whether we shall recog- 
nise ourselves there. For deep down in our hearts we 
have a feeling that God will need to make some 
changes in us before we are fit for heaven. 

It seems to me that skepticism about another world 
overlooks the significance of the fact that we are in a 
world now. If one world is actual surely another 
world is possible. Every day we find that some new 
possibility is displacing some old impossibility, and 
perhaps we are only on the edge of this kind of dis- 
covery. We did not make this world. We cannot say 
that its Author cannot make another world. We do 
not come into this world by our own choice — there 
was a little something in Colonel Ingersoll’s fling 
about that. But the brilliant skeptic missed the all- 
important fact that our Maker is now giving us a 
chance to choose a world in which to live. It is the 
greatest choice ever put at human disposal. We can 
choose a good world or a bad world. Could moral 
freedom be given a greater prerogative than that? 
And is it easy to see how else it could have been done? 

Therefore I conclude that another world, our im- 
mortality, may be part of the Divine plan for giving 
free moral agents a chance to choose their own world. 
And I am always impressed with the feeling that the 
Divine plan of moral responsibility is committed to 
something more than what we get in this world. There 
does not seem to be room enough, time enough, in 
this little life for the plan tp work itself to such a 
finish as to meet all our moral questions. When the 
line of conduct is made so absolutely important it 
does seem as if it ought to take us a very, very long 
way. 


ARE WE IMMORTAL? 


267 


I know that to ask for immortal life seems a great 
request, but it will beggar neither space nor time. 
They are limitless ; we cannot think without them. If 
we think of a line or a place, it always is in space ; and 
there is space beyond. Why then should not I be 
given a little corner somewhere in all this limitless 
range in which to live? And time is endless. We 
cannot think of a time when there will not be further 
time. When the angel said that there shall be no 
more time he only meant time as we know it, too long 
while we are eager children, too short as we grow old, 
too uncertain as we are planning and wishing and 
hoping. All the incidents and accidents will be 
brushed away. There will be no midnight, nor noon ; 
the shadows will not slope down the hill; there will 
be eternal duration. Why should not we endure with 
it? The very exhaustiveness of it calls for some- 
thing. If that something is our immortality it will 
be in harmony with the deepest of human hopes and 
the profoundest of divine purposes as proclaimed in 
the gospel of Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XXXL 
A Skeptic's Four-Fold Challenge. 

A n avowed skeptic, who occasionally attended my 
services, treated me to three or four letters in 
which he took exception to my statements. He 
seemed to be a kind of a bill of exceptions. '‘Why 
don't you answer some of the people who are undoing 
your churches?" he asked. 

“Tell me what it is you want me to answer," I re- 
plied. You seem to have a good deal on your mind, 
fire it off." 

He came back with a little shower. “I challenge 
you to go before your people with these questions," 
he said. 

“What is your answer to the man who says that 
Science has destroyed Christian beliefs? 

“What is your answer to the woman who claims 
that Christian Science has superseded Christian be- 
lief? 

“What is your answer to the agnostic who says 
that he does not know? 

“What is your answer to the Evolutionist who 
holds that man made his religion along with houses, 
wagons and other things? 

“I want you to make these answers in public, not 
in private, and I suggest that you take a mid-week 
meeting for it.” 

I accepted his suggestion and announced that I 
would give the next weekly meeting to the matter. Of 
269 


270 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


course the room was more crowded than usual, for 
the skeptic brought some of his friends; and there 
are others who take more interest in discussion than 
in devotion. 

In opening the meeting I said that we would have 
a brief season of prayer before beginning the business 
of the evening. The skeptical crowd looked alarmed, 
and a half dozen slipped out while the going was 
good. I took the questions in the order given, re- 
marking that the shortness of the time would compel 
me to make the answers brief. I proceeded somewhat 
as follows: 

“What answer have you to the man who says that 
Science has destroyed Christian belief?” 

My answer is, that Science has not destroyed 
Christian belief. Somebody always has been destroy- 
ing Christianity, but there is more of it in the world 
than ever. The author of Christianity was no sooner 
born in Bethlehem of Judea than Herod undertook 
to destroy Him and all He was bringing to the world, 
root and branch. Herod did not succeed. The 
Caesars undertook to persecute Christianity to death. 
They did not succeed. The emperor Julian changed 
the pagan program of destruction somewhat, but he 
did not succeed. The English and French Rational- 
ists thought that they were giving Christianity a 
finishing stroke. “We have it reduced to twilight,” 
they jeeringly exclaimed, “and it will soon be all night 
for it.” But the Sun of Righteousness did not re- 
tire. The Voltaires and the Bollingbrokes have been 
dead a good while, in fact, so long that few people 
know what they said. But multiplied millions of 
people know what Christianity is saying. It is pro- 
claiming itself in multiplied churches, in Bibles mul- 
tiplied by millions, to Sunday schools with their 


A SKEPTICS FOUR-FOLD CHALLENGE 271 


multiplied millions, and in the multiplied activities 
of Christian effort and human uplift. 

Christians have made mistakes, of course, but the 
most collossal mistake ever made about Christianity 
is to think that it can be destroyed. That there have 
been some serious differences between science and 
Christian belief, I admit. These differences have 
been most pronounced along the line of geological 
research. The geologist has been long on time. If 
one of his alleged processes does not explain he adds 
a few million years to it. And if it still falls short, 
he adds a hundred million or two hundred million to 
it. He has things so very far away in the past that 
no one can draw a line on him. 

The geologist is great on fossils. As a rule people 
do not like fossils in the pulpit, but the geologist 
looks for them in the rocks with devouring eagerness. 
They are a great joy to him. A progressive preacher 
knocks a brother preacher because he is what he calls 
a fossil; then he pats the geologist or naturalist on 
the back because he has found another fossil, a million 
or so years old. 

An Old Testament seer found a valley filled with 
dry bones and put flesh on them and made them live. 
A geologist finds a valley full of dead bones and 
makes them several million years deader than they 
were before. This is one of the differences between 
scince and Christianity. Science makes many things 
a long time and awfully dead. Christianity makes 
life. ‘T am come that they may have life and that 
they may have it more abundantly.” Science puts 
its millions of years behind man. Christianity puts 
its millions of years in front of man. Science says 
to dead things in the rocky tomb, ‘^Be dead a million 
years sooner.” Christianity says to the living man, 
‘‘Live a million years longer.” That is why Christian- 


272 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


ity cannot be destroyed. Men would rather have the 
race live longer than to have died sooner. Our fun- 
damental is life, not death. It is a vast hope for the 
future, not an appalling recollection of the past. 

But you say that science is doing much to make 
life more abundant, to make the hand of one man 
do what was once the daily task of scores of men, 
to fill our houses with conveniences and comforts, to 
send us on our journey with swiftness and luxuriant 
ease. So it is, but it is doing these things in the 
lands where church bells ring and where the Sabbath 
day gives the human mind a change and rest, time to 
recuperate and get a new grip on the past. It has 
not done these things where Christianity had not 
come. Heathendom has been stupidly stationary. 
Christianity makes a new kind of men, and they 
change the way of doing things and the way of living. 
General Chinese Gordon said that he found an African 
chief in full dress — that is, in a string of beads and 
an old silk hat. When an African community is con- 
verted the people change their style, they get on 
some clothes; and their barren fields begin to blos- 
som like gardens. I repeat, Christianity means life 
and more life. So far as science lends a hand, there 
is no difference between them. They are true yolk- 
fellows. And what God hath joined together let no 
man put asunder by trying to make us believe that 
it is the mission of science to kill off belief in 
Christianity. 

Herod had his particular and personal reason for 
attempting to kill Christianity in its cradle. Julian 
had his particular reason for assaulting it later on. 
When a man boasts that science is killing Christian- 
ity there is reason to suspect that he has some special 
or personal reason for wanting it killed. The 
Christian religion calls for repentance, and it may be 


A SKEPTICS FOUR-FOLD CHALLENGE 273 


just as inconvenient and unpleasant for a scientist 
to repent of his sins — and we all have them — as it is 
for anybody else. 

A man who wants to reason scientifically about 
religion should study the relation between causes and 
effects in religious life. If he studies the circulation 
of the blood in a frog’s foot and then attempts to apply 
his conclusion to the action of a human spirit in re- 
ligious life, he will make a mistake. Scientists have 
made many such mistakes in discussing religion — and 
very few of them can let the discussion of religion 
alone, because in the last analysis they find it the most 
vital of all subjects. 

Another mistake is in thinking that scientists find 
it easier to explain the past than Christian believers. 
Both are confronted by the question, “In the be- 
ginning, what?” Christian belief says, “In the be- 
ginning, God.” Science has no answer that makes 
fewer diffijculties, in fact, no answer that does not 
make more difficulties. Put God in the beginning and 
you have a cause equal to the whole line of effect. 
Take away a Supreme Mind, an Omnipotent God, and 
progress presents a line of phenomena from lower to 
higher, from lesser to greater, from material to 
spiritual, in which the effect seems to be greater than 
the cause. This is not logical, it is not philosophical, 
it is not really scientific. With God in the beginning, 
we have not only an adequate cause to meet the de- 
mands of our thinking, but also an inspiration to high 
endeavor, an abiding Friend, and an Eternal Reward. 

“What answer have you to the woman who claims 
that Christian Science has superseded the belief of 
the churches?” 

I answer, that she made more money out of her 
claim with less evidence to prove it than any other 
individual that ever dabbled in that line of specula- 


274 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


tion. For proof she submitted the cures which she 
alleged that she effected; but she maintained that 
physical phenomena are a delusion. Therefore she 
ruled her own evidence out of court. 

She also told more people not to worry and at the 
same time laid up more wherewithal for a rainy day 
than any person who has put in a claim for an orig- 
inal discovery in religion. 

Again, her theory maintains that there is no 
reality in sin, sickness and suffering. Therefore it 
differs radically, fundamentally, from the religion 
taught by the Bible, and has no valid claim to the 
name Christian. For the whole Bible scheme pro- 
creeds on the basis that sin, sickness and suffering are 
realities. The Bible does not dismiss them with a 
wave of the hand, or rather, with a toss of thought, 
as non-realities, but provides for them a Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world. I repeat, the 
difference is fundamental. 

“What answer have you for the agnostic who re- 
plies, T do not know; you do not know; nobody 
knows.” ’ 

The Agnostic says he does not know. It is his 
answer to the most important question of religion 
and of human destiny. The term Agnostic is a com- 
bination of two Greek words which mean not to 
know. 

Now, we all are agreed that there was a time when 
the Agnostic’s ignorance of everything was almost 
complete, namely, when he was a babe, a little lump of 
flesh, of hunger, squalls and colic. His first knowledge 
was of his mother. She was all the world to him, 
yea, more, all the universe to him. Her face was 
the heavens above, her eyes his sun and stars, her 
arms his earth underneath. 


A SKEPTICS FOUR-FOLD CHALLENGE 275 


His next step in knowledge was his recognition 
of his dependence upon her. To her he turned as 
the source of all supplies and all relief. He knew 
that she loved him and he trusted in her help. As 
he grew older and the world began to antagonize him 
she was still his refuge. When something struck 
him he ran to his mother. When a dog frightened 
him he ran to his mother. Dependence upon a love 
which supplied his wants and protected his life was 
the order of his existence. And that is the order of 
the religious life. The Agnostic does not have to 
learn an impossible lesson in becoming a religious 
man. God’s love broods over him; God’s hand helps 
him. There is nothing new about that. He learned 
it when his mother smiled upon him, when she fed 
him at her breast. If he will go on with his God as 
he went on with his mother, he will enter into the 
largeness of life, reach the great end, fulfill the pur- 
pose of his being. 

Human childhood is the longest of all childhoods, 
a fact much emphasized by scientists, and because it 
is so long it results in the greatest of all beings on 
earth. A deer is old while a child is still young. 
The deer becomes sport for hunters and hounds. 
Man becomes the finest fruit that earth holds up to 
heaven. We call ourselves the children of God, and 
are proud of the distinction. But childhood is depend- 
ent. As soon as dependence on the parent is over 
we are no longer children. Eternally dependent upon 
God, we are eternally His children. We can destroy 
the childhood only by refusing to recognize the de- 
pendence and wresting ourselves out of His hands. 
The long childhood under God makes the soul so 
great, the destiny of man so wonderful. 

But the Agnostic says, that destiny is the one par- 
ticular thing about which he does not know. The 


276 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


first question which we are compelled to ask him is, 
whether he wants to know. A witness under cross 
examination says he does not remember. The attor- 
ney changes the question so that the answer will be 
more favorable to his side of the case, then he re- 
members. Another unfavorable question, and he does 
not remember. After a few repetitions of this kind 
the spectators begin to suspect that he does not re- 
member because he does not want to remember. So 
with the Agnostic when he much protests ignorance. 
He is suspected of not wanting to know. When a 
child he learned that he pleased his mother less as a 
bad boy than as a good boy. His reason teaches 
him the same thing about God. Religion is not try- 
ing to teach him an unheard of and impossible lesson 
when it tells him to please God. And if he does not 
know that goodness is the way to God and badness 
the other way, it would seem that it is because he 
does not want to know. He knows that a bad lot of 
people do not make a happy home and therefore ought 
to know that they will not make a happy hereafter. 

Just what God’s home will be, he does not need to 
know. Much of it can be left for discovery at the 
important time. A man does not need to know the 
elementary composition of water. He knows that it 
satisfies thirst, and that is worth more to him than 
all the scientific knowledge about it. So with the 
water of life. A man can drink and live wihout being 
a scientist. ‘‘The Spirit and the Bride say Come ; and 
let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let 
him take the water of life freely.” Is the Agnostic 
athirst? Does he want to come? 

Mr. Huxley, who had agnostic spells, says this of 
the Bible: “By the study of what other book could 
children be so much humanized and made to feel that 
each figure in that vast historical procession earns the 


A SKEPTICS FOUR-FOLD CHALLENGE 277 

blessing or the curses of all time according to the 
effort to do good and to hate evil?” Therefore, what 
the agnostic needs to know is the value of his Bible, 
if he has one ; and if not, to go and get one. 

“What answer have you to the evolutionist who 
holds that man made religion as he learned to make 
houses, wagons and other things which he wanted?” 

In making answer to this question permit me to 
begin with an incident. When I was a boy a man 
who was one of my father’s parishioners told me a 
story which he said had helped him in life and might 
be useful to me. “We lived on a farm, the man said, 
and it was my job as a boy to mount a horse in the 
evening and bring home the cows from a wide open 
range. One evening I came to a little river which 
ran through the range, and heavy rains had swollen 
the stream until it was running bank full and very 
swiftly. Some of the cattle were on the other side 
and I tried to make my horse cross the river. But 
the knowing animal refused to take the risk. I 
kicked it in the sides and hit it with the cow whip, but 
it stubbornly refused to play the part. After a 
night’s sleep over the matter I believed that the horse 
had saved my life. You are a minister’s son, my boy, 
but horse-sense is a mighty good thing for you or for 
any other man’s son to cultivate.” 

As a Christian believer I have tried to have some 
horse sense about this stream of evolution which has 
been pouring like a flood through modern thought. 
I do not want my Christian faith to be swept away 
by this flood. I have seen Unitarian ministers car- 
ried down the stream into a misty sea of Rationalism, 
and have seen ministers of evangelical churches swept 
down to Unitarianism by it. They get where the 
water is too deep to wade and too swift for them to 
swim ashore and they go down. And the astonish- 


278 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


ing thing about it is that they wonder why people 
who are standing safely on the shore are not carried 
away with them. A lot of them need a Noah and his 
ark. 

I waded into this streatfi myself once, but when I 
found the water too deep and my feet going from 
under me a friendly hand threw me a life-line and I 
came ashore. After I had wiped the water out of my 
eyes and dried my clothes, I made up my mind that 
progressive preaching could not run with the current 
toward rationalism. A calling in which belief is so 
fundamental as it is in preaching must make its 
progress toward faith, not away from it. I am not 
quarreling with evolution. I am simply refusing to 
let it sweep my feet off the Rock of Ages. 

Evolutionary preachers tell us that the fall of man 
was a fall upward. But my observation is that men 
are not falling up into heaven. It costs a climb. 

A man-made religion makes its own god. The 
old-time pagan religion makes its god of wood, stone 
or brass. The fire-worshipper makes his god of sun, 
moon and stars, or the fire on the hearth. The fetish 
worshipper makes a god of whatever is convenient. 
The Greeks made their god of human nature, and they 
were a tough lot of gods. The modern man is more 
refined, and when he constructs his own religion he 
makes his god of figments of the imagination, concep- 
tions, philosophies, theories. He is only a subjective 
god; he has no objective existence. As one of the 
moderns expressed it, he is only a term for our 
thoughts about the matter. 

But in spite of all these vagaries of the modern 
mind there is a solemn sense of the fitness of things 
which holds on its way to the kingdom of God. There 
is a faith too profound, too earnest, to accept any 
mere human program of religion. It declines to be- 


A SKEPTICS FOUR-FOLD CHALLENGE 279 


lieve that our salvation came up from protoplasm, 
through varying forms of life, through sap of tree, 
and vein of animal. The soul, not merely speculat- 
ing about religion, but yearning for deliverance from 
the guilt and power of sin, looks to the great God 
above, to the Savior on the cross, to the regenerat- 
ing Spirit. Now and evermore the Church of the 
Living God will sing, 

‘Traise Father, Son and Holy 


Ghost.** 



» 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Evolution of an Evolutionist. 

A PROFESSOR who heard the address in reply 
to the skeptic^s challenge asked me to say 
something further on the subject of evolution. 
'T think that evolution has unsettled many ministers,” 
he said, ‘‘that it has put them where Lincoln told 
one of his generals he had put himself, when he had 
half of his army on one side of a river and half on 
the other side, that he was like an ox half over a 
fence.’* 

I acted on the professor’s suggestion, and at the 
next meeting I spoke on “The Evolution of an Evo- 
lutionist.” 

“An evolutionist,” I said, “is a striking illustration 
of the difference between man and the rest of the 
world in which he lives. Man is the one being in the 
^orld who studies the rest of it, thinks about it, talks 
about it, asks where it is going, what it is made of, 
who made it, and if nobody made it how it came to 
make itself. Nothing which walks on four legs or flies 
in the air or swims in the sea asks or discusses these 
questions. You have to think of it but a moment to 
see how great the difference is. Now the evolution- 
ist, I say, is a pronounced illustration of this differ- 
ence, for he asks so many of these questions, tries 
to answer so many of them. 

“How came man to have this kind of distinction, 
faculty or capacity for considering and pronouncing 
281 


282 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


upon the rest of things? The biblical account of 
this distinction, as given in Genesis, is that when God 
made man he brought the rest of the things to him to 
see what he would call them. There we have it as 
the Divine intention that man was to take a good 
look and a long look at the creation around him, at 
all the things made, and give his opinion about them 
and names to them. And this is what the evolution- 
ists have been doing, eagerly, laboriously, incessantly, 
and they have done much naming, and they also have 
been abundantly free with their opinions. That is to 
say, the scientist is distinctly provided for and made 
part of Godis plan for man at the beginning of the 
Bible. The faculty for passing upon other things 
came, not from protoplasm, but with the image in 
which God made man, and the impulse for investiga- 
tion came from a Divine suggestion or direction. It 
was just as much God’s original intention to have man 
an investigator in the material world as to have him 
an actor in the moral world. God is interested in 
man’s opinion about what He has made as well as in 
his attitude toward the moral laws which He has 
made. In the sight of God correct opinion is an im- 
portant part of character. In both respects the race 
has been slow, made many blunders, fallen into many 
errors, in a word, been a pretty bad actor ; but man is 
getting there. 

‘‘Now take Darwin, the apostle of evolution, and 
think for a few moments about his antecedents; that 
he was a man born in a Christian country, educated 
in schools of Christian beliefs, biblical beliefs, a man 
of religious beliefs himself, according to his own 
statement. Out of this atmosphere with its multi- 
plied influences and impulses and hints and intima- 
tions and inspirations and aspirations he went forth 
to begin his investigation. He traveled far over the 


THE EVOLUTION OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 283 


waters of the Pacific, among the South Sea Islands. 
If Charles Darwin had been born in the South Sea 
Islands where they never had heard of Christianity 
or known the Bible would he have become the great 
evolutionist? Not a bit of it. No faded tradition or 
lingering remembrance which came up from proto- 
plasm would have made him the distinguished investi- 
gator. It was not in the original cells of matter to 
say, ‘Let us go to now, and make Charles Darwin.’ 
He got his start, his impulse, from the Christendom 
out of which he came to the cannibal islands; and 
that Christendom came out of the Divine plan with 
the Bible for its chart. His later confessions seem to 
indicate that he afterwards lost his religious beliefs. 
But he would have missed his place in history, in the 
world of science, and the remembrance of mankind, 
if he had never felt the touch of religious influence. 

“Alfred Wallace seems to have been a twin apostle 
of Darwin, and he also was a child of the same 
Christian land and people and environment and also 
a pronounced believer in spiritual existences. Even 
the German extremists, the men who make evolution 
a consuming fire for everything religious, were born 
and moved and had their being in the land of Luther 
and the Reformation. Their intellectual impulses 
came out of a religious environment. No other kind 
of environment ever produced an evolutionist or ever 
could produce an evolutionist. An evolutionist is 
distinctly and emphatically an evolution from the re- 
ligion of the Bible. That religion alone can and does 
give to the human mind the conception or idea of 
order and law which sends men courageously and in- 
dustriously into an investigation of nature for law and 
order. The mighty man of the Old Testament is a 
law giver, and Bible-taught men know that there 
ought to be law in nature and therefore go on a hunt 


284 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


for it. To find it is their great joy. They carry it 
home as the shepherd did his lost sheep. 

‘T repeat, it is the impulse of religious belief, a 
faculty given with the Divine image, which sends men 
down into nature to take a long, hard look at it and 
name it. All the actual discoveries of science answer 
the Divine wish to see what man would call things. 
Darwin and Lincoln were born on the same day, one 
gave an intellectual push, and the other a moral push. 

'‘Because of the same attribute man goes into 
nature to lay hold of its forces and make them do his 
work for him. That also is in the same passage o£ 
Genesis. Man was to have the world which spread 
before him to subdue it and enjoy it. The forces of 
the natural world were having an idle time of it until 
the enterprising man began to get busy with them. 
Steam power knocked the lid off the tea kettle and 
then knocked off for the rest of the day. Now it is 
kept harnessed to the wheels of industry day and 
night. Electricity played in the clouds until Frank- 
lin got a kite line on it, and now it is kept busy on 
land and sea and over the sea and under the sea. 

“They talk about intervention as unscientific. 
Was there ever such a misapprehension? All im- 
portant material progress is intervention. In fact, 
civilization is a history of interventions. We go for- 
ward because we constantly are intervening in the 
forces of nature, making them do things which they 
would not do if left to themselves. Man’s power to 
intervene, his knowledge and will and determination 
to compel the laws and forces of nature to do his 
bidding, are the source and cause of his progress in 
material life. He is a born intervener. 

“What is the use of saying that God could not 
intervene if He wanted to do so, when we see man 
who is made in His image doing it every day? 


THE EVOLUTION OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 28S 


Wherever you have mind, will, and purpose, you will 
have intervention in forces which are below them. 

‘‘This power of dominion, I say, is something 
which we find along side of the investigating powers 
set forth in Genesis — ‘let us make man in our image, 
and let them have dominion.’ It all is linked up with 
the Divine image. God rules over all, and because 
man is made in His image he has the conception of 
dominion over all the forces, the impulse to compel 
them to do his bidding. He differs from the rest of 
creation in this respect because he was made differ- 
ent. In a most important sense man himself was an 
intervention. 

“But you ask why the evolutionist rejects the idea 
of intervention? His theory explains it. According 
to his theory a type is made or fixed by what it feeds 
upon. If it feeds in the shallow waters along the 
shore it develops long legs and a long bill. If it 
feeds on the leaves and twigs of the tree top, its neck 
grows until it becomes a giraffe. The evolutionist 
goes into the fields of nature looking for natural se- 
quence, an uninterrupted process. His eyes look for 
that, his ears listen for that, his hands feel for that, 
his mind feeds on that. To use the language of the 
street, he is a rubber neck for that kind of thing, and 
consequently he develops a long neck in that direc- 
tion. He becomes very long on natural sequence, 
short on intervention. He is a victim of his own doc- 
trine of natural selection. 

“Professor Huxley makes a remark which confirms 
this view of the matter, ‘Color,’ says the professor, ‘is 
the name for that group of states of feeling which 
we call red, blue, yellow, etc. In the same way a law 
of nature in the scientific sense is the product of a 
mental operation on the facts of nature. Laws of 
nature are a mere record of experiences.’ 


286 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“That is, the evolutionist bends all his mental 
operations to a certain line of discovery, and his prod- 
uct reflects his mental bias; it is red, blue or yellow 
according to the change of his mental action ; and his 
alleged laws of nature are a mere record of his ex- 
periences. The exafct truth of the matter, or the 
actual laws, will not be known until it all has been 
thrashed out through so many minds as to rub off the 
color and the varied and multiplied mental experi- 
ences have been tested by all the laws of logic and 
actual knowledge. This may take a hundred years 
yet, a thousand years yet, which means that the evo- 
lutionist is not yet fully evoluted. He insists upon 
much time for his process in the past. It is rather 
brash for him to think that his own evolution could 
be completed in so short a time. To say that the 
evolutionist is still very much in the raw, a callow 
youth, is only to apply to him his own theory. Dar- 
win and Lincoln, I said, were born on the same day. 
The people whom Lincoln emancipated are not yet at 
the top of the hill, nor is Darwin's theory at the top 
of the hill. 

“Again, you ask, why if the evolutionists start 
out with the impulses mentioned as coming from the 
Divine image, some of them become skeptics and 
array themselves against the very book to which you 
trace their origin. The answer is similar to that given 
to the previous question. They become like what 
they feed their minds upon. They fasten their minds 
upon matter, its energies and its action until they be- 
come materialized. Put the water of a stream into 
a narrow mill race and it will turn a wheel and grind 
a certain kind of grist. Make it overflow a surround- 
ing plain and it will produce a rich harvest. The 
intense evolutionist gets his mind into a narrow chan- 
nel and grinds out an attractive, speculative theory. 


THE EVOLUTION OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 287 


but he does not raise much of a moral or spiritual 
harvest. 

‘‘The radical or extreme evolutionist is a man who 
traces a material efifect to a material cause and keeps 
on the backward trail until he reaches that extreme 
pitch where he declares that matter was eternal, en- 
ergy eternal, life eternal, all ultimate facts, and pos- 
sessing potentialities which came up through millions 
of years of evolution until they reached the present 
stage of the universe. He does not need a God, nor 
a Bible, nor a church, nor an altar, nor a preacher. 
How protoplasm happened to get it into its mind to 
produce a preacher millions of years later is one of 
the questions which bothers him. He cannot explain 
that it was because nature has a fondness for the orna- 
mental, because all preachers are not ornamental. Nor 
can he explain that it was because nature has a strong 
conception of the useful, because he does not believe 
that preachers are useful, but an expensive and 
meddlesome nuisance. About the only thing he can 
say is, that nature sometimes got off on a wrong 
tangent, and when it was producing a preacher was 
one of these times. But the preacher turns up his 
nose and replies that when it was producing a skep- 
tical evolutionist was another of the times. 

“In a word, the skeptical evolutionist is another 
victim of an overdose of his own theory. A giraffe 
is a freak in the animal kingdom — it gets its head too 
high in the air. Likewise, the atheistic evolutionist 
is a freak among men. He gets his head too high in 
the air. He needs a change of diet He should go to 
church, attend the midweek meeting; and he also 
should pause to consider what his family will want 
the minister to say about him and for him at his 
funeral. For wherever his theories may be headed, he 
himself is headed for a funeral. 


288 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


‘‘But why do you say that some preachers are like 
an ox half way across a fence? Because it so well 
illustrates the fix they are in. The ox cannot hook 
the dogs which are barking at him in front nor kick 
the dogs which are snapping at him in the rear. So 
with the preachers who are so impaled on the evolu- 
tion theory that they cannot defend the Bible and the 
Christian faith from attacks in front or in the rear. 
They have gone so far with the radical evolutionist's 
opposition that they cannot accept the Bible as a 
Divine revelation, nor the miracles of the Bible as 
historical, nor anything, in fact, which contains the 
supernatural element. And yet they are in pulpits 
which were made by belief in the supernatural. It is 
a bad fix to be in. And worse yet, they think they 
are progressive preachers. 

“But you ask, who is the progressive preacher? 
He is the preacher who accepts Christianity as the 
great intervention. So far as evolution is a doctrine 
of the survival of the fittest it is largely a doctrine of 
progress by calamity. Darwin's survivors were the 
strong members of a tribe or species which remained 
when a calamity, disaster, deluge, or destruction was 
past. But the high purpose of creation required a 
change from progress by disaster to progress by pros- 
perity, by peace instead of war, by strengthening the 
weak instead of destroying them, by the cure of ig- 
norance and sin and evil things. And this is what 
Christianity does. 

In the next place, evolution was a process of varia- 
tion. As Herbert Spencer puts it, and his interpre- 
tation is generally accepted, evolution proceeds from 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, taking the 
original element in differing and far apart directions 
until the type becomes fixed. But now we all know 
that the important thing is, not to get further apart 


THE EVOLUTION OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 289 


and stay apart, but to get together. The old evolu- 
tionary principle was to hunt the other man down 
and do him up. The Christian idea is to hunt for 
him as a lost brother and make up with him and lift 
him up. Christianity breaks down the middle walls 
of partition, wipes out lines of separation. As Paul 
finely puts it, ‘There is neither Greek, nor Jew,, bar- 
barian, Scythian, bond, nor free. All are one in 
Christ.* He made the great at-one-ment, is the 
Atonement, the wonderful Intervention. He came be- 
tween the strong and the weak, the high and the 
low, the Jew and the Greek, to make them one. 
He came between man and his sin to make him holy, 
between man and his bondage to make him free, be- 
tween man and death to make him live. He is the 
Mediator between man and God, between earth and 
heaven, between death and life, between time and 
eternity. I repeat, Christianity is the great Inter- 
vention. 

‘T also repeat that the evolutionist is constantly 
in danger of his own theory in another direction. His 
process of variation produced a beast of prey which 
rends and destroys, and running in another direction 
produced the bird of prey which likewise destroys, 
and running in still another direction produced the 
serpent with its deadly poison. The same process at 
work upon the evolutionist himself may produce the 
rabid skeptic who rends and destroys sacred things, 
or the cold blooded skeptic who poisons the minds of 
men with doubts and unbelief. He himself may 
easily become any one of the human menagerie. 
There are times in his career or evolution when he 
stands very much in need of a providential interven- 
tion to save him from becoming a hyena or a serpent 
in a religious community. 

“Now a final word about human knowledge. A 


290 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


scientist claims that he investigates and knows; a 
philosopher, that he thinks and knows; and a re- 
ligious believer, that he hears and knows. But all 
are compelled to admit that what they do know is 
small compared with what they do not know. In my 
humble judgment it requires the whole man to know. 
To illustrate, through our physical nature we know 
that water satisfies thirst; through the intellect the 
scientist knows the component parts of water and its 
relation to other forms of matter; and through our 
moral nature we know that it is wrong to supply a 
city with polluted, disease-breeding water. That is 
to say, the material world is related to us physically, 
intellectually, and morally; or, reversing the terms, 
we are related to it in this threefold way. Hence the 
knowledge of it to be complete must be of this three- 
fold character, through the senses, the mind, the moral 
endowment. Or to change the terms again, there 
must be intuitive knowledge, the intellectual knowl- 
edge of relations, and the moral knowledge of rela- 
tions. Whether this is what the latest famous philoso- 
pher, Mr. Bergson, means by his theory of knowl- 
edge, I cannot say, for his friends and his critics are 
not agreed as to what he does mean. Like all 
philosophers, he finds it exceedingly difficult to tell 
exactly what he believes. Beecher used to say that 
the Bible could be understood in spite of the com- 
mentators, and perhaps some of the philosophers can 
be understood in spite of their attempts to make them- 
selves understood. At all events, Mr. Bergson un- 
doubtedly is right in holding that we cannot know 
things correctly by tearing them to pieces and putting 
our knowledge into a formula, but that knowledge 
must seize them as they are, whether at rest or in 
flux. 

'^So far as evolutionists only tear things to pieces 


THE EVOLUTION OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 291 


by investigation and put them together in a theory, 
their knowledge is incomplete. And their authority is 
unreliable in the great relations and responsibilities of 
human life. It will not be accepted as final, it cannot 
be accepted as final. The common knowledge of the 
human kind, the great basic convictions of men, the 
tremendous sense of responsibility, the mighty fears 
and hopes surging through the hearts of generations, 
the intimations of destiny, and the vast expectations 
ever rising before us, will bear down their theory and 
irresistibly assert the right of mankind to a broader, 
greater, more spiritual interpretation of the universe. 

“The evolutionist is still too narrow, too imma- 
ture, to be the spokesman of the race. In a thousand 
years from now he will know more and assert less. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

A New Year and Another Church. 

I T IS difficult to keep a holiday civilized. It has 
a tendency to run away with itself. We had to 
put the lid on our Fourth of July celebration to 
keep it from blowing us into kingdom come. The 
New Year celebration is not quite so hard to manage, 
but it is a peculiar mixture, a mixture of hilarity and 
solemnity. One man takes too much, another man 
takes a sober thought of time. We feast and we 
falter, yve celebrate and we hesitate. We know that 
we have fallen far short in the past and we fear that 
we may do so again. To meet this fear we try to brace 
up with resolutions. We put a new figure in our let- 
ter heads, and then we put it in our own heads that 
we are somehow going to cut a new figure in life. 
But personality is persistent. It is at once our con- 
fidence and our terror, our big possession and our big 
responsibility. Mountains are big, but they are not 
personal. We are a little lump of clay, but personal, 
therefore bigger than mountains, and no other day 
in the year so measures us, so sizes us up and down 
in our own thoughts as the first day. We balance 
low performance in the past with high resolves for 
the future. 

And New Year resolutions are valuable while they 
are strictly fresh, but not after they have been in 
cold storage. When they begin to crack and crumble 
the wheezy little man who buys ‘‘ra-ags and ole’ ir’ne” 
293 


294 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


in the back alley would not haul them away as a gift. 
They would be rough on rats if the rodents found 
them in the garbage box. They are the poorest old 
junk that time stumbles over while it is groping 
through the dark, coupling midnight to morning. 

My New Year resolution confined itself to preach- 
ing. I resolved to be a better preacher, because that 
was my line. Flying is a bird’s line, the better it 
can fly the more likely it is to save the expense of 
furnishing a meal for a cat. Running is a deer’s line, 
the faster it can run the safer it is from the hound 
and the hunter. The better a minister can preach the 
safer he is from the people who soon want a pastor to 
move on — the people who look for another. 

In order to be a better preacher I thought of re- 
signing and accepting a call which had come from 
another church. I knew that new pastors succeed, 
for the news columns of the religious weeklies told me 
so — there could be no doubt about it. We cannot 
question their reports, that when a new man comes 
to the pulpit the people come to church, that the ‘'Sun- 
day school increases 40 per cent, the mid-week meet- 
ing 29 per cent,” etc., that the young people begin to 
stay for the evening service, and that the leader of 
movements against pastors is almost persuaded to be 
a Christian. Therefore it made a change seem at- 
tractive. It appealed to me. 

But before deciding I went to see a brother min- 
ister of more years, and hence of fewer illusions and 
egotisms. 

“If I knew what you wanted to do,” he said, “to 
go or to stay, I could advise you more wisely, for in 
my experience I find that people seeking advice want 
to be advised to do what they want to do” (my friend 
was something of a wag). 

“Fire away in the dark,” I replied. 


A NEW YEAR AND ANOTHER CHURCH 295 

“Well, sir, there are material advantages in going 
to another field,’* he said with a twinkle in his eye. 
“The people warm up to a new pastor and give him 
a donation or a shower, enough sometimes to start a 
cross-roads store, pans, water pails, coal buckets, roll- 
ing pins, brooms, butter, lard, hair-oil, honey, pan- 
cake flower warranted to bake without early rising, 
and other things which suggest themselves to a ben- 
evolent frame of mind.” 

“Oh, stop, I am not wanting to leave the pulpit to 
become a floor walker in a department store, and I 
am full of that kind of advantage already. My people 
gave me a Christmas shower, slippers, duplicated and 
repeated until I was in slippery places, house robes 
and jackets, until there was no room in the closet even 
for a skeleton, paper weights enough to throw at all 
the cats which try to serenade me under the back win- 
dow, with a few left to shy through the open window 
at the vocal music student in her rip-roaring hour of 
practice, not to hurt her of course, but to put a scare 
on her wild efforts to improve her voice by disturb- 
ing the neighborhood. No, I don’t need a shower. 
Get away from that.” 

“Do you want to preach over your old sermons?” 

“No. I want to take the old text and the old 
subject and preach the sermon which I did not preach 
the other time.” 

“You have growth in you. The young minister 
who preaches a sermon a second time just as he 
preached it the first time is not likely to get out of his 
knee pants. But is Providence pointing to the new 
field? Is the salary better?” 

“Don’t spring that. In every minister there is a 
man who has to be fed with what money buys in the 
market, but there is another man who sees beyond 
salaries, high or low. The ministers of America make 


296 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


longer and greater preparation for their calling and 
work for smaller compensation than any other class. 
Ten years of expensive preparation and an average 
salary of from $600 to $800 a year. Think of it !” 

“What then is the attraction of the new field?” 

“A college in the city, students, students in the 
congregation.” 

“Now you are hitting something; you are talking. 
I hear the tread of time in the student procession. 
The college yell is a wild thing, but it has the call of 
the future, the captaincies of the coming generations. 
Go, and God bless you.” 

I resigned, to take effect the first of February; and 
accepted the call, to begin the first of April. I wanted 
two months’ time to get my breath and also to stand 
on the sidewalk and look at the pulpit procession 
go by. 

Before my pastorate closed I went into the back 
room of a faithful friend and asked him to talk plainly 
to me about my pastorate and preaching. He was a 
physician, and he looked at me as if I had asked him 
to perform a painful operation, but finally got out his 
mental instruments and proceeded. 

“As a preacher,” he said, “you have too many vir- 
tues for your faults. A man cannot be a very popular 
preacher without pronounced virtues and pronounced 
faults. The applause of his admirers and the knock- 
ing of his critics make noise enough to attract atten- 
tion to him. It was so with Spurgeon, it was so with 
Beecher. It is so with the most surprising American 
evangelist that ever called 'old mutts’ to repentance. 
If there was not so much saw-dust in his preaching, 
such flocks of people would not hit his trail. 

“If perfect preachers could do the work angels 
from heaven would be put in the pulpits and not men 
from the seminaries. If you were more venturesome, 


A NEW YEAR AND ANOTHER CHURCH 297 


you would have more faults, make more mistakes, but 
you would get further. The man who is afraid of 
making mistakes does not make much of anything, and 
that is a serious mistake. 

“Don’t try to be a scholar in the pulpit, but a 
preacher. The Congregationalists have raised up 
scholars for their pulpits, and their following is still 
numbered by thousands. The Methodists have raised 
up preachers and their numbers run into the millions. 

“Don’t bring the scaffold used in building your 
sermons into the pulpit with you. Leave your chips 
on the woodpile. But above all things, don’t raise 
more questions than you can answer. There are 
plenty of people in a congregation who are born inter- 
rogation points, who want to know where Cain got his 
wife, etc. Tell them he got her in the front parlor 
when the light was turned low, and don’t raise any 
question about the old man. He might come down 
stairs with something on his mind, if not in his hand. 

“One thing more, shoot near the center. Don’t 
waste valuable ammunition firing around the edge. 
The preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the cen- 
ter shot of the moral world. 

“But why are ministers becoming so restless?” he 
asked. “Who do they want to change?” 

“Because we live in such a restless country,” I re- 
plied. “One of a minister’s difficulties in keeping an 
American flock on the way to heaven is that there are 
so many other places in this world to which they want 
to go. We live in the best country and yet run around 
more than other people, to see the rest of the world, to 
see old ruins^ old abbeys, old mummies, old Egypt, 
any old thing. We like to look at the coffin of a dead 
king, at the spot where he took the heads off his 
queens or killed his subjects to make them love him. 

“When we are not crossing the ocean we are 


298 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


swinging around our own country. We go to the sea- 
shore or the mountain in summer and to Florida or 
California in the winter. When we are not going to 
a summer resort or a winter resort, we are moving. 
If we are downtown we move uptown, if we are up- 
town we move to a suburb. If we are in a house we 
move to an apartment. If we land on a lower floor 
we move to an upper floor. It is our solemn principle 
of habitation not to stay put. 

*‘And this is another of the minister's troubles, es- 
pecially in the larger cities. The old-time pastor 
knew where to find his people. The present-day pas- 
tor looks to see where a family lived last year and 
then does not go there. He goes up to the sixth or 
seventh floor of an apartment building to find them^ 
If the mother is expostulating with a daughter for 
going to dances every night in the week or daddy is 
lecturing the rest of the family on domestic economy, 
and they don't want any more lecturers around, the 
pastor can tip the elevator boy and get down on the 
double quick or make a hurried retreat by the fire- 
escape. 

“Yes, we are a restless people. All the time on 
the go. The automobile struck a psychological time, 
because it takes us somewhere else on the quick. It 
is here to stay. Everything is here to stay which 
helps us to go. But for the same reason the minister 
does not stay. The ‘go’ has caught him in its whirl." 

“There is force in what you say,” replied the doc- 
tor, “but every calling has its difficulties. We have 
troubles of our own.” 

“Yes, but you have some advantages over us. 
When you go into a house you are an authority, but 
when we go into the pulpit we are not always nor 
much of the time an authority.” 


A NEW YEAR AND ANOTHER CHURCH 299 


“No, and you have been dissipating the authority 
which you did have. You have questioned the old 
authorities, the Bible and all, until you have under- 
mined the authority of your calling. It was profes- 
sional suicide, but you did not seem to know it. You 
have unsettled the people, and that has increased the 
restlessness of the people of which you complain. You 
call it readjustment, but your readjustment does not 
connect up, and religious belief is in a flux. Don’t 
you know that a preacher must tell people to believe 
or he will kill off his calling? Do I need to go six or 
eight blocks to hear a man give me his doubts, when 
a half dozen doubts come into my mind in a minute?” 

“Not unless you want exercise; but you have an- 
other advantage. People do not like to be sick, and 
they do like to sin. When they feel bad they go for 
a doctor. When they are bad they don’t go to the 
minister or want to go to church.” 

“You ought to make them feel bad when they sin. 
The trouble with a lot of preaching is that it makes 
sinners feel better than it does the saints. When you 
make sinners feel that there is not going to be much 
of a shower after all they begin to think that they 
don’t need you. It is some more of your professional 
suicide. But that is just when they do begin to need 
you. When young men stop going to church they 
will soon be going to the doctor. Doesn’t every doc- 
tor in the land know it only too well. We have to 
stay at home from church on Sunday to listen to their 
troubles because they have stopped listening to your 
preaching.” 

“Perhaps if you were in the pulpit on Sunday in- 
stead of in your office you could warn them of the 
wrath to come.” 

“That is your job, not ours. When a minister tries 
to put out the fire against sin in the Bible he kindles 


300 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


it in flesh and blood and bone. Better burn the wrath 
into a man’s mind than have it burn into his bones.” 

“But you certainly will admit this advantage to 
your calling, nature helps you; it is healing. But 
human nature does not help us, it is sinful.” 

“Yes, in a way, nature is healing, but the great 
English doctor was right when he impatiently ex- 
claimed, ‘Why do you say nature wants to save life? 
It does not want to save life. It wants to kill us, and 
it will kill us to clear the ground for another genera- 
tion.’ And this is what a doctor has to work against 
all the time, sure death in the long run. The run may 
be 40 years, 60 years, 70 years, four-score, but at last 
crape hangs on the door, and the man hangs around 
no more. ‘The silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl 
is broken, and the mourners go about the streets.’ 
General William Henry Harrison escaped all the death 
traps that Indian warfare and all kinds of weather set 
for him, but death got him in a month at the White 
House. It set a hoard of office seekers and politicians 
upon him, and they shook him to death as a dog does 
a rat. Old Zack Taylor fought Indians, Mexicans, 
swamp fevers, and all the other exposures to a standr 
still ; but when he feasted in the big state dining room 
at Washington death gave him a dose of cholera mor- 
bus, and his wife threw herself on his dead body 
shrieking, ‘I knew it would kill him, I knew it would 
kill him!’ 

“Yes, sir, while there are laws of health, valuable 
beyond expression, yet after all there is a law of na- 
ture which kills. The great apostle never said a truer 
thing than this, ‘The law kills’.” 

“Yes,” I replied, “but He also said, ‘We are saved 
by grace.’” 

“So he did,” said the doctor with great emphasis, 
“and that is what preachers must preach, if they are 


A NEW YEAR AND ANOTHER CHURCH 301 

going to get anywhere or have us get anywhere except 
in the cold, hard clutch of death. You may call it 
grace or what you will, but I know that there must be 
something which is above and beyond what we know 
of law if we are not utterly to perish in this awful 
round of destruction. Saved by grace sounds good to 
me.” 

‘^On rising to leave I said, “I thank you heartily, 
doctor, for this talk ; is there any other word you want 
to say?” 

‘7ust one word : we have learned in our profession 
to keep our instruments very clean, to sterilize them 
and all that. It is four-fifths of our progress, and yet 
it is only going back to Moses and his minute direc- 
tions about cleansing pots and kettles and hands and 
food. Cleaning up prevents disease, which is better 
than curing it. And it is in line with what you min- 
isters preach when you tell us to keep clean morally. 
Progress in your profession and in mine is pretty 
largely a matter of learning how to avoid pollution. 
You are teaching the world to clean up against sin; 
we are teaching it to clean up against disease. Our 
professions are twins.” 

“Yes, doctor, and you and I are brothers.” 



I 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The Resignation and Return to Florida. 

T here is more comfort for a minister in resign- 
ing a pastorate to accept a call to another than 
in being resigned to a fate which compels a 
change. Sometimes the latter taxes the finest Chris- 
tian heroism, and it is becoming rather common. 

My trouble was in squaring accounts with my 
church. I felt that I had been using the church to 
learn how to preach, practicing upon it. But how can 
a young minister learn to preach, except by preach- 
ing? And he must begin on somebody. I had begun 
on these people, and they had endured it. The world 
loves a young man, and for that reason they had loved 
me. The world believes in young men in spite of 
their inexperience, and that had saved me. A farmer 
looks at his field of young corn when it is green as 
grass hopefully, tenderly, for he knows that by and 
by it will have ears. And so the church seemed to 
have thought that I would ear out by and by and take 
on more wisdom from the voices which speak to a 
man in the practical experience of his calling. 

I had come to them with a knowledge of the peo- 
ple who live in books, some of them very long dead 
and others very fictitious and unreal. But I found it 
necessary to preach to people who live now, not in 
books, but in houses, on the street, in the struggle for 
daily bread and the battle with the forces of evil. I 
had to acquire a new knowledge of my fellow men 
303 


304 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


and learn to preach to them. It was a double task. I 
had been a subject of the schools, a fellow-citizen of 
the critics; now I had to become a fellow-citizen of 
the fellow-citizens whom men address when they rise 
to speak from the platform. In a word, I was in much 
need of a making over, and, as I say, I felt that the 
account was somewhat against me, that I ought not 
to have been quite so much rewarded for practicing 
upon the church so freely. 

In my farewell sermon I admitted as much of this 
as the occasion would bear, and then went on to ex- 
press the hope that some good had been done. I said, 
“God was moved by the tears of a troubled king. I 
have seen your tears, and they have moved me, moved 
me nearer to the heart of the compassionate One, 
taught me that earth has some sorrows which heaven 
alone can heal. If I have turned tearful faces toward 
the fountain of eternal love I thank God for having 
given me that privilege. 

“I have seen your problems, seen how deep and 
how old many of them are, that they have come along 
the ages, as clouds sweep along the mountain sides. 
And I have realized that no human program is suffi- 
cient for the solution of some of them. If I have 
turned your thoughts toward Him who is the Expla- 
nation of all things, I thank God for having given me 
this privilege 

“I also have seen what a little word can do — *the 
Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.’ This is a 
minister’s consolation and encouragement. If the pul- 
pit had to put a full-grown kingdom into the human 
heart armies of ministers could not do it. Many of 
you were good enough to take my little seeds of sow- 
ing and make a harvest. I thank God for it. 

“My experience among you has been peculiar in 
one respect, namely, in something of a change of theo- 


THE RESIGNATION AND RETURN TO FLORIDA 305 


logical attitude. We all know that one of the serious 
factors in human affairs is ‘the man higher up.' It is 
so in business ; it is so in politics ; it is so in religion. 
In religion this man gets between his fellow man and 
God. In Christ's day he was a rabbi, a Pharisee or a 
high priest. In Luther's day he was a pope. In our 
day, as I now view matters, he is a higher critic. But 
whatever he is called, or whatever else his pose may 
be, he claims high authority, more than belongs to 
him or is safe for believers. In the past he usually 
claimed more authority upon the divine side of religion 
than belonged to him. At present he is claiming more 
authority from the human side than is good for relig- 
ion, too much authority for scholarship. 

“I confess that as a student this scholarship had its 
fascination for me. As a preacher I began to see the 
danger and disaster of its excessive claims and broke 
with it. If the change has made me a better preacher 
I thank God for hum\)ling my pride and making me 
more obedient to His voice and more responsive to the 
great needs of your spiritual life and the cry of your 
immortal souls. 

“So I leave you, both humbled and thankful. I 
also rejoice in leaving you to think what God can and 
will do for you through His faithful servants in the 
days to come." 

When my work with the church closed I expected 
to use my two months' leisure in visiting other 
churches. I wanted to see how some of the preachers 
did it, and how others did not do it. The one is about 
as important as the other. But the first week of my 
vacation had not passed when I began to feel restless. 
Perhaps it was because I had nothing to do. Perhaps 
it was because the hegira to Florida put its spell upon 
me. The Kingsleys had gone in December, and Miss 
Kingsley wrote that her college chum, Miss Rosslyn, 


306 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


was to be her guest for the winter. Of course, I did 
not admit that the chum disturbed me, but I had a 
feeling that I did not want any more Rosslyns down 
there. 

Anyhow, I did not seem quite myself, and my 
mother noticed it and got worked up about it. She 
spoke about it in the evening; and the next morning, 
as luck would have it, she saw an announcement of 
the death of an acquaintance in the daily paper, and 
heart trouble was the cause. She looked across the 
table at me with much concern and remarked that 
heart trouble was becoming rather prevalent. I re- 
plied that I thought so too, that there were four hun- 
dred million people in China, and whenever there was 
a rumor of war they all had heart failure. 

“That is too far fetched,” she said, “and I can’t 
have you joking about so serious a matter. I fear 
that you have heart trouble. You must get off to 
Florida; it did you so much good last year. But you 
must see the doctor before you go.” 

The doctor came, with a twinkle in his eye and 
banter in his voice, and I had to meet him on his own 
ground. He felt my pulse, and said that it was still 
beating. I told him that this was encouraging, that I 
did not want to think that I was dead, or that my 
pulse had got up my sleeve and was trying to put 
something over on me. 

“Let me see your tongue,” he said. 

“A preacher’s tongue is to be heard, not seen,” I 
replied, with a sly look at my mother. 

“Just so, but open up and — shut up.” 

I relaxed, and he gazed at my organ of delivery. 
“It looks well,” he said; “it is not wearing out; and 
it is still hung in the middle,” he added, with a chuckle. 

“That is as it should be,” I replied, “for if it is 


THE RESIGNATION AND RETURN TO FLORIDA 307 


hung in the middle I can talk on both sides of a ques- 
tion, which is fair.’’ 

“There is nothing the matter with you, and I don’t 
see why you need to go to Florida. Have you any 
interests there which need looking after?” 

“None which is paying big interest on the money.” 

He seemed puzzled, which did not strike me as 
being professional ; for doctors look wise, not puzzled. 

After he was gone mother sat with a determined 
look on her face, and finally remarked, “I don’t care 
what the doctor says, I want you to go to Florida, for 
I know you need the trip. Mind your mother.” 

“All right, mother, Fll go if you’ll go with me.” 

“Certainly Fll go with you, for you have no church 
now, and I don’t need to stay at home to sit up with 
it.” 

“Put on your wraps, and let us be off.” 

“Hold on, boy, hold on a bit!” she exclaimed with 
a flutter. 

A week later she had her wraps on, and we were 
off. I felt that she had some artistic designs in her 
mind, but I was glad all the way down that she had 
come along, because she brought things to pass which 
added to the scenery inside the car. 

An ardent woman suffragist was aboard the train, 
a bright, strong woman, with a robust disposition to 
communicate her views and a conquering tone of 
voice. Mother warmed up to her beautifully, but it 
did not require much to set the woman in motion. 
When mother asked her why the suffrage movement 
had gained such headway, she unwound her explana- 
tions with rapidity. 

“It was because man was making such a mess of 
things,” she said. “Man has a strong body and a 
strong opinion of himself,” she went on, “but he also 
has strong appetites. He wants strong drink and 


308 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


tobacco aiKi all that. He needed a regulator, and the 
suffrage woman has stepped in to regulate him. The 
movement got its impulse from the Woman’s Chris- 
tian Temperance Union’s war upon strong drink. 
These women said that we would never have the right 
kind of men or the right kind of government until 
the strong drink habit and business were killed. Not 
caring for the stuff themselves, it was easy for women 
to get on the water wagon ; for all reforms begin with 
people who do not need reforming and worjc over into 
the class who do need reforming. Men had tried tem- 
perance societies, but with little success. When the 
women got hold of the reform they made it go, for 
they had no hankering after the stuff themselves. 

‘‘Then they saw that they needed votes to get 
there, and they went after suffrage. This accounts for 
the rush of the movement. But there also is another 
reason. The watchword of the temperance movement 
is, ‘Protect the Home,’ and the American man is a 
home lover. I give him credit for that. He toils for 
home, sacrifices for home, lives for home. And just 
as soon as woman began to talk suffrage for the sake 
of protecting the home he tumbled to her plea. My 
first husband is dead and I am now living with a sec- 
ond husband, and both of them stayed at home, I tell 
you. Woman suffrage is changing the face of human 
affairs. It is bringing in a new age.” 

“What do you mean by a new age?” asked mother. 

“I mean an age of obedient husbands,” replied the 
woman with a triumphant air. 

“I thought that the age of democracy was to bring 
the millennium,” said mother. 

“No,” replied the suffragist, “that has been the 
dream, but dreams are sometimes flighty, and this is 
one of them. The plain fact of the matter is that the 
devil is one of the most democratic of individuals. He 


THE RESIGNATION AND RETURN TO FLORIDA 309 


has a high old time with the high-brows and a low- 
down time with the down-and-outs. He is the origi- 
nal hale fellow well met with all the old sinners and all 
the middle aged sinners and all the young sinners in 
the world. You can’t down the devil with a democ- 
racy made up of men. The Lord knew it, and there- 
fore He made the promise about bruising Satan’s head 
to woman. When woman gets where she can whack 
Satan over the head with her ballot he will know it. 
Think of a lot of old sinners in Congress and legisla- 
tures believing that they can reform the devil and his 
followers, because they are working under a demo- 
cratic form of government! Isn’t it absurd? It can’t 
be done. The woman suffragist is a political, eco- 
nomic, moral necessity. She is the advance agent of 
the millennium.” 

This settled the matter. The suffrage sister slowed 
down, and then with a glance over my way she said, 
“Your son is a minister? I like ministers; they look 
so nice in white ties and black coats and their hair 
combed. But why don’t they vote as they pray?” 

“I don’t know,” replied mother, “but when you 
have the suffrage will you pray as you vote?” 

“Perhaps, but we are so busy with the movement 
that we don’t have time to pray.” 

“If that is the case, it will be a soft jolt that you 
give the devil.” 

The train was now running into Chattanooga, and 
mother asked what the long rows of little white stones 
standing over the hillside meant. 

“They mark the graves of the men who fell at 
Chicamaugua,” I said. “Young men die, and govern- 
ment lives.” 

“Young men die and women weep,” added mother. 

“Some day women will stop the warring and the 
weeping,” said the suffragist. 


310 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“Every reform has its some day,” I remarked, “its 
sweet, sweet some day, when all will be lovely.” 

After leaving Chattanooga we began marching 
through Georgia, — Georgia is the heart of the South — 
and here the great cotton factories appeared at the 
edge of the towns. 

“We are regulating these factories all right,” said 
the suffragist. “We don’t intend to have women 
bringing forth children only to be stunted and dwarfed 
and worked to death by greedy men. They say that 
the present generation discovered the child, and it was 
woman who hastened the discovery.” 

“I don’t know about that,” mother replied, “for I 
think that if the baby of a thousand years ago had the 
colic in the night the man of the house must have dis- 
covered the child, or he was too dead asleep to dis- 
cover anything.” 

“You are facetious.” 

“Possibly, but not as ridiculous as the reform 
women who are so much concerned about the children 
of other people and have so few of their own. What 
I should like to know is how you are going to have a 
working world if you train up the children to regard 
work as a hardship, a wrong and a crime. It is the 
tendency of reforms to go too far, and we shall have 
to be pretty careful about this reform against work.” 

“I admit the danger,” replied the sister, “but it is 
impossible to conceive of a generation of lazy Ameri- 
cans.” 

In the morning a rush of warm air came through 
the car, and mother exclaimed, “What is that? Is the 
woods on fire?” 

“No, we are in Florida,” I said. 

“I wish I had left my heavy clothes at home.” 

“You may wish that you had a feather bed when 
you retire tonight.” 


THE RESIGNATION AND RETURN TO FLORIDA 311 


“I wish I hadn’t come.” 

“Oh, no, you don’t; you will wish that you could 
stay always.” 

“I don’t believe it; where is my fan?” 

“Breakfast are now being served in the dining car,” 
called a waiter. 

“A cup of hot coffee will make you feel better, 
mother. Come along.” 

“I feel cooked, but I’ll go. When do we reach 
the resort?” 

“About the time we are through breakfast.” 

There was something of a delegation at the sta- 
tion to meet us, and Mr. Kingsley took us to the hotel 
in his car. Bob was not there to take the baggage, 
and on inquiring, I was told that “Captain” Bamby 
was not handling baggage now, but was a deputy 
sheriff; and I also heard that it was through “Col- 
onel” Kingsley’s influence that he secured the posi- 
tion. 

Before evening mother had fallen in love with the 
blue sky, the flowers, and the palms, and was listen- 
ing with rapture to the mocking bird which gave a 
daily serenade from a neighboring live oak. 

In the afternoon I walked with Miss Kingsley on 
the bank of the river, the gleaming, beautiful river. 

“It is just as beautiful as ever,” she said, “but it 
makes me sad, for cousin Susie loved it so much, and 
we hardly missed a day without coming to look at it. 
But now 

“ ‘Those lips that echoed the sounds of mine 
Are as cold as that gliding river, 

And that eye, that beautiful spirit’s shrine. 

Has shrouded its fires forever.’ 

“It is so hard to believe that she is gone. One 
woman could not have loved another more than I 
loved her, and how can I have it so? 


312 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


“ ‘One year ago— a ringing voice, 

A clear blue eye, 

And waving curls of sunny hair. 

Too fair to die. 

“ ‘One year ago what loves, what schemes. 

Far into life! 

What joyous hopes, what high resolves. 

What generous strife! 

“ ‘One year — one year, one little year. 

And so much gone! 

And yet the even flow of life 
Moves calmly on.’ 

“Yes, the even flow of life goes on, and while I 
know it ought to be so, yet it adds to the pain to see 
the great world move along as if we shed no tears, 
uttered no sighs, and nothing had been lost out of life. 
A sparkling dew drop falls from an overhanging 
bough into the river and then is gone forever. We 
can weep, but we cannot wait. We too must go on 
with our part. The sweet sorrow may make us bet- 
ter, while the call of life should make us more heroic 
and true.” 


CHAPTER XXKV. 

Under the Linger-Longer Tree. 

Once on a golden afternoon, 

With radiant faces and hearts in tune, 

Two fond lovers in dreaming mood 
Looked for a leafy solitude. 

Wholly happy they only knew 

That the earth was bright and the sky was blue, 

That light and beauty and joy and song 
Charmed the way as they passed along. 

W HY is a poet? Because there is a something 
which others do not get. The poet gets it. 
There is a something in philosophy which the 
philosopher does not express, a something in history 
which the historian does not record, a something in 
science which the scientist does not analyze, a some- 
thing in the stars which the astronomer does not catch 
in his telescope, a something in religion which the 
theologian does not formulate ; always and everywhere 
a something more which only the poet can reduce to 
expression. 

But is there no poetry in the rest of us? Certainly 
there is poetry in us, otherwise the poet would work 
in a vacuum, blossom in a desert, sing his song to a 
deaf world. Poets we all are, but too weak to work it 
into form, hazy, lazy, limp. We dream and imagine, 
build air castles and see rainbows and angels and 
heavenly worlds. Poets give it voice, and therefore 
are a class. We all are on the rounds of their ladder. 
They climb to the top and are seen and heard; we 
313 


314 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


keep near the ground and are unknown. We call 
them sentimental, but they help us to think about 
everything which belongs to life, from philosophy to 
drudgery. And there are times when they are spe- 
cially useful. 

It may have been such a time as this for me when 
I strolled along the river bank again on a golden 
afternoon. Anyhow I felt an attack of poetry coming 
on and turned my steps toward The Linger-Longer 
Tree for shelter. Through some strange conspiracy 
between impulse and circumstance I found Miss 
Kingsley seated on the rustic bench, and she also 
seemed to be in a poetic mood, for she immediately 
pointed to a beautiful cloud with the joy of color in its 
fleecy folds, floating across the blue. “Our life is 
like it,” she said, “set against the limitless and glow- 
ing in the light eternal.” 

But her friend. Miss Rosslyn, was with her, and 
that did not seem so poetic. Fortunately she soon 
remembered that she had an appointment to go auto 
riding at that hour and withdrew. “Miss Rosslyn is 
a dear girl,” said Miss Kingsley ; “we were like sisters 
in college.” 

This remark chilled me a trifle, for I did not want 
the sisterly idea to go too far. In an awkward kind 
of way I said, “No doubt you have seen the announce- 
ment that her father is to retire from Congress and 
that there is a movement to pass the seat over to his 
son. 

“Yes,” she replied, “and papa is in the movement. 
Mr. Rosslyn is a very smart young man; don’t you 
like him?” 

“Pretty well,” I stammered, “and I think I should 
like him still better if he were further away.” 

She looked straight into my eyes for a moment and 
then her face colored deeply. For once Miss Kings-. 


UNDER THE LINGER-LONGER TREE 


31S 


ley had lost her wonderful self-control. To relieve 
her embarrassment I told her to look at a great school 
of mullet which were leaping across the water. 

‘‘Where is Mr. Rosslyn now?’’ I asked. “I have 
not seen him for a day or two.” 

“He has gone down the coast to see the Senator, 
who has a fishing camp near Jupiter.” 

“You mean the big political boss?” 

“Yes,” she replied, “and papa does not like that.” 

This was more encouraging. 

“He wants him to break with the bosses,” she went 
on, “for he thinks they are a nuisance and a danger. 
But Mr. Rosslyn says that to do so would be break- 
ing his political neck before he got started in the race. 
He says that we do not know their influence, that 
powerful interests are back of them, that they would 
soon start an undertow, with an editorial thrust here 
and an interview there, a squib today and more squibs 
tomorrow, and one lie coming down the road and 
another around the corner, and by the time they got 
through with him his friends would hardly recognize 
his remains. Papa tells him to defy the bosses, and 
he says that he will when he gets to Washington and 
has a standing place.” 

“You seem to have talked it all over,” I said; “is 
it a family affair?” Her only reply was a stern look, 
and I hastened to apologize, with the remark that I 
could easily see why her father was concerned about 
the evil influence of political machines and bosses, that 
I thought the same way myself.” 

“Did you ever wish that you were a politician?” 
she asked. 

“Sometimes, and sometimes I wish that I were a 
blacksmith. He hits a hot iron and every blow counts. 
When he is through he can see what he has done. I 
pound on cold iron and half the time I cannot see that 


316 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


I have done anything. A politician makes a speech 
and the people applaud, stamp their feet, yell, and 
then they vote. A preacher does his level best and 
the people sit as silent as gravestones, go out silently 
when it is over, go home, and the church is silent. 
The preacher is the only one who has made any noise. 
It is oppressive, smothering — the loneliest job that a 
human ever taxes his organs of speech to put over. 
It thrilled me to hear the people shouting amen when 
you talked. I could be a preacher too if they would 
amen me a few times.” 

‘‘Just give us a chance again,” she laughed, “and 
ril get Captain Bamby and Lucy and we’ll make an 
amen corner and whoop you up good. But you 
should not be too much disturbed by silence. The 
greatest effects are produced in silence. Who hears 
the grass grow or the leaves unfold or the flowers 
bloom? A procession of spring blossoms marches up 
from the South and nobody hears its tread. The face 
of the earth is transformed and there is no sound. The 
great resolves are made in the silence of the sou) It 
is one of the achievements of preaching that it silences 
the clamor of the many disturbing voices of outer life 
and gives the inner life a chance to assert itself.” 

“That is an encouraging view of the matter, but 
one good hearty amen from you would go a long way 
with me.” 

She looked at her locket, and I made bold to ask 
her whose picture it held. 

“Here it is,” she replied, opening the locket. “Who 
does it look like?” 

“I should call it a Joan of Arc.” 

“So it is. I read much about her when I was a 
young girl, and I felt that of all women she had the 
courage of her convictions. She thought she could do 
great things, and did them. So I put her picture in 


UNDER THE LINGER-LONGER TREE 


317 


the locket which mother gave me because I thought 
the combination would help to keep up my courage 
when I felt faint-hearted/’ 

“Joan did daring things, and peihaps that accounts 
for your daring on that Sunday afternoon. But what 
became of the picture which- my mother gave to you 
when you were a little girl to keep you from crying?” 

“It is gone long ago. I wore it out looking at it,” 
she said with such a merry little laugh that the mock- 
ing birds must have been tempted to imitate it. 

“How glad you must have been to see the original 
again?” 

“Yes indeed, my heart thumped so hard when I 
saw you rise in the pulpit that morning that I was 
afraid mother would hear it. You know I always felt 
responsible for you because I predicted that you would 
succeed. But I wanted to put you out of the syna- 
gogue before you were through with the sermon.” 

“It was a narrow escape. What saved rne?” 

“Oh, I did not feel quite so bad the next morning, 
and when I met you on the river bank I thought you 
looked better on Monday than on Sunday — progress- 
ive preachers usually do. A secular day is more be- 
coming to them. On Sunday they get up into the air 
or away in the mists ; during the rest of the week they 
keep near terra firma.” 

“And so you concluded to tolerate me a little 
longer?” 

“No, I concluded to trust my prophecy a little 
longer.” 

“What do you think now?” 

“I think you are coming along splendidly. The 
year has done wonders for you.” 

“I have learned some things.” 

“Tell me some of them ; I am interested.” 

“I have learned that there are difficulties of thought 


318 


A PROGRESSIVE PREACHER 


which cannot be escaped by changing theories. They 
are in the twilight zone between the material and the 
spiritual, and will be there until the perfect day comes. 

‘T have learned that liberty means freedom from 
what hinders and freedom unto what helps. The first 
signifies little without the second. The one may only 
be the liberty of the skeptic; the other completes the 
liberty of the believer. It is Christianity’s measure- 
less contribution to human freedom. And this has 
taught me that a preacher is not progressive simply 
because he is going away from something ; he must go 
towards something. The signs of progress are in 
front, not in the rear. T press toward the mark,’ said 
Paul. I also have learned that the desire for change 
is one of the most difficult of all human forces to man- 
age. It inspires progress ; it hinders progress. It up- 
sets a settled program of progress simply to escape 
monotony. It flies back to evils from which we have 
escaped for the sake of a change. The stupendous 
task of the progressive leader is to keep the passion 
for change on an upward curve, for it is sure to move 
in a curve. 

“Another thing which I have learned is that an 
opinion is not a message. The pulpit does not lose 
power if it preaches a message, and messages were 
not born today nor yesterday, but are as eternal as the 
difference between right and wrong, as God himself. 

“One thing more, no human program is or can be 
equal to the redemption of the world from sin. It 
must be God’s program. The world cannot outgrow 
its sin. It must be saved from it. 

“I do not mean to say that I did not know these 
things before, but I know them much better than I 
did a year ago.” 

“I felt that my expectation of you would not fail,” 
she said. 


UNDER THE LINGER-LONGER TREE 


319 


“It is my turn now to have some expectations/^ 

“I think you have had them for some time.” 

“And you watched them grow.” 

“They interested me.” 

She said this with a fascinating little smile and I 
felt encouraged. When we finally rose to go the 
world seemed very beautiful. There was music in the 
Linger-Longer Tree; winds from the orange groves 
came with their fragrance, a crimson glow was on the 
Western sky, and the mocking birds were singing their 
evening song. At the cottage we found the two 
mothers in the pergola. They looked at us, glanced 
at one another and then rose and greeted us with a 
shower of congratulations and kisses, and then kissed 
one another. 

In the excitement of the moment I kissed all three. 
It was a happy time. 


The End. 



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